Artist-activist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) said yesterday his 81-day detention and clash with authorities over alleged tax evasion was emblematic of countless other lesser-known cases of detainees held in jails and labor camps in China.
For the first time since he was released from secret detention in late June, Ai met publicly yesterday with authorities at the Beijing tax bureau, which approved his payment of 8.45 million yuan (US$1.3 million) — all contributions from tens of thousands of supporters — allowing him access to an administrative review of the tax evasion charges.
Surrounded by television reporters outside the tax bureau, Ai said tax authorities told him they will “carefully handle” an administrative review, in which a panel re-examines the merits of an official decision to bill him 15 million yuan.
Photo: AFP
“I’m speaking up, not for myself, but for those who have no voice,” Ai, 54, told reporters in an interview at his home and studio in northeastern Beijing.
“I hope that when society looks at me, they’ll remember that I’m not an individual case,” he said. “Many people don’t understand why they can’t be with their children, they aren’t able to see the people they want to see. Their voices will never be heard.”
Human rights groups say that Chinese police and security agencies have detained or put in secretive extra-judicial confinement hundreds of dissidents, activists and persistent protesters since February, reflecting government alarm that unrest that spread across the Arab world might inspire anti-government protests in China.
Many detainees have subsequently been released, but they often remain under close surveillance.
Yesterday morning, several police cars were parked outside Ai’s home. Ai said they had taken away many people who had come to show support in recent days.
On a table in Ai’s work studio, balloons printed with the words “Free Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠)” were stuffed in a vase. Chen is a blind legal activist whose long confinement in his village in eastern China has sparked widespread anger.
A popular Chinese newspaper, the Global Times, dismissed the small sums donated by tens of thousands of supporters to Ai as trifling in the context of China’s 1.3 billion people.
“Ai Weiwei is a symbol of the Western world’s wholehearted support for dissidents,” said a commentary in the paper, which often reports on current affairs from a nationalist viewpoint. “It must be said that without the ardent support of foreign forces, Ai Weiwei would be nothing — Ai Weiwei has merely made himself a point for the West to pry open China.”
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