Beijing-based artist Hua Yong (華湧) has been detained by police after documenting the mass eviction of migrant workers, his friends said yesterday.
“His current situation is unknown. We have contacted his family and lawyer and legal formalities are being processed,” a handwritten statement posted on Hua’s Twitter and signed by artists Ji Feng (季風) and Guo Zhenming (郭珍明) said.
In the weeks before he disappeared, Hua uploaded dozens of videos on YouTube and Chinese social media platform WeChat documenting the destruction of migrant neighborhoods on the outskirts of Beijing.
Since setting up a YouTube account only two weeks ago, his videos have been viewed tens of thousands of times and some have been translated by others into English.
Hua was taken from a friend’s home in Tianjin early on Saturday after fleeing Beijing to evade police, other friends said.
“Police grabbed him. Didn’t you know? Nobody is able to contact him,” one of them said on condition of anonymity.
The Tianjin Public Security Bureau could not be reached for comment.
Hua’s videos, usually shot with a selfie stick, brought viewers into demolished migrant neighborhoods and recorded his conversations with displaced low-income workers.
In one he walks between heaps of rubble, gesturing around him and saying: “The sky is very blue today, but look at what’s behind me, all ruined in an instant.”
Hua on Friday night posted several videos on Twitter entitled “They’re Here.” In the videos he said police were at the door and he would soon have to leave with them.
“Daddy is using these last minutes to sing you a song: ‘Happy birthday to you’ ... Daddy wants our country to be better; it should be just, fair, free and democratic with free speech,” Hua said, addressing his three-year-old daughter.
Hundreds of millions of migrants who moved from China’s countryside to its cities has fueled the nation’s dramatic economic boom, but some are no longer welcome in overcrowded Beijing, which seeks to cap its population at 23 million by 2020 and demolish 40 million square meters of illegal structures — mostly shops and homes for migrants — by the end of the year.
Authorities say that they need to clear dangerous buildings after a fire killed 19 people last month. A blaze in another migrant area killed five people last week.
Fire safety is a major problem in the city’s cheap migrant housing, which often has jerry-rigged electrical wiring and an absence of emergency exits, but the brutal efficiency of the demolitions and mass evictions has provoked an unusual public outcry that has put officials on edge.
Amnesty International China researcher Patrick Poon said authorities are “very concerned” that discussions about the topic would harm China’s image.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has since taking power in 2012 led a sweeping crackdown on civil society, targeting everyone from human rights lawyers to celebrity gossip bloggers.
Activists have been jailed on charges such as “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” “subversion of state power” and defamation for spreading “false rumors” online.
“Ironically, by targeting Hua Yong, it further hurts China’s image when even documenting what happened could be justified as a crime,” Poon said.
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