Ai, who spent much of his life in the West, went missing at the Beijing airport on April 3 before boarding a plane to Hong Kong en route to Taiwan. For three weeks now Ai’s whereabouts has been unknown. During this time official Chinese media launched a smear campaign against him while Ai supporters world wide protested outside of Chinese consulates and circulated petitions for his release. The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances issued a statement for Ai’s release on April 8 and said, “Enforced disappearance is a crime under international law.”
An April 21 article submitted to the NGO “Human Rights in China” by a mainland Chinese using an alias, alleges that Ai has been severely tortured in custody and has signed a confession of tax fraud.
Mocking the Regime
Ai Weiwei’s work as an artist has tremendous appeal to people all over the world because of his strong and stubborn conscience. Ai is fiercely critical and outspoken of the communist regime’s civil rights violations. Ai has frequently made use of the “grass mud horse” and other homophones in his art to mock and express his contempt for the Chinese communist regime. And that’s what people see as the real reason for Ai’s disappearance.
“After 60 years of absolute power, the Chinese Communist Party is more fragile than the world thinks--and has trouble dealing with any criticism or challenge, especially from its own people,” award-winning Montreal based writer Yan Liang said in an April 19 blog on Linda Leith’s Salon of Montreal Writers.
Yan commented on Ai’s provocative 2009 art called “Leapfrog with Cao Ni Ma.” The piece is a photo of a nude pose by the artist with a model “grass mud horse,” that barely covers up the artist’s private parts--also a homophone for the central committee of Chinese Communist Party (Dang Zhong Yang), according to Yan.
Chinese political commentator He Qinglian said this piece by Ai is probably the one that has annoyed the authorities the most.
Read More...Taste of Freedom
Taste of Freedom
“When an animal is released after being kept in a cage for several decades, my most direct feeling was one of the greatest freedom. … No one kept an eye on me and I lived the way I liked every day,” Ai said in a May 6, 2009 Southern Weekly article about his experience of living in the U.S.
“From as early as I can remember, I’ve seen my father living a life without freedom. When I became older, I found that I lived the same kind of life. This was horrifying,” Ai said during an interview with three Chinese artists on Dec. 19, 2009.
“Your soul is born with a desire for freedom, but your longing for freedom is sedated when you fail to find it after you grow up. You lose your ability to judge. It is almost a moral deficiency. Yet in America, I was fixing this deficiency,” he said during the same interview.
In New York Ai participated in the production of the popular Chinese TV drama, “A Beijing Native in New York,” directed by Feng Xiaogang. Feng, one of the most successful Chinese directors presently, once said, “New York is boring without Ai Weiwei.”
From Artist to Dissident
After the devastating May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province, the Chinese regime promised to conduct a thorough investigation into the collapse of school buildings. Ai offered his help by initiating a civil investigation and sending over one hundred volunteers to gather statistics of affected students in the earthquake-stricken area. But authorities stepped in to stop their investigation.
Author Tan Zuoren who also participated, was charged with “subversion of state power.”
On Aug. 12, 2009, Ai prepared to appear in court for the case, but was violently beaten by police. When he later traveled to Germany, he was diagnosed with severe brain hemorrhage and had to undergo surgery in Munich.
In November 2009 and May 2010, Ai’s studio produced two short documentaries, one on Shanghai right activist Feng Zhenghu, the other on Yang Jia, a young Chinese man who was executed for stabbing six police officers out of revenge for being tortured during a prior police interrogation.
Regime Must Go
Chinese author Ren Yanfang interviewed Ai at his studio after Ai’s return from Germany in 2009. Ai told Ren the Chinese government should publicly disclose all information, as it affects one-sixth of the world’s population.
“I am clearly saying that this authoritarian regime must end. Let’s take a look at the promise the Chinese Communist Party made to the people 60 years ago and see who has betrayed the promise,” Ai said in the same article that was also posted on The Chinese Epoch Times.
“Back then they condemned one-party autocracy and promised to give people democracy and freedom. They also proposed that the military should be nationalized and should not be an army that serves a certain individual [Party]. Dare anyone of you read any of those old articles?” Ai challenged the Chinese people.
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