Human Rights in China

Censors in China have attempted to purge an essay written by prominent artist and dissident Ai Weiwei by manually tearing the pages of the article from a weekly news magazine.

The essay, which appears in the September 5 issue of Newsweek, urges Chinese citizens to speak out against what he says is the government's denial of basic rights. He also blasts the Chinese judicial system as being untrustworthy.

However, the article was still accessible online to English speakers.

Ai was understood to be barred from speaking to media or leaving Beijing after being released from jail in June. The internationally renowned artist was detained for almost three months after being charged with tax evasion.

Circle of Animals
Somerset House, Londonuntil June 26.
Exhibition at the Lisson Gallery, London until July 16.

Ai Weiwei's bronze Circle of Animals in the courtyard of Somerset House make a surreal spectacle, but the subtle irony of the work is what makes it so appealing.

After the enormous acclaim he received for his show of a hundred million porcelain sunflower seeds at Tate Modern earlier this year, Ai Weiwei should have been in London this week for the opening of two major displays of his work. But last month the artist, writer, political activist and provocateur was detained by the authorities in Beijing, and has not been seen or heard from since. The international outcry grows louder by the day.

Ai Weiwei often uses art and the internet to expose the repression and corruption in the country of his birth. But just as often his work looks at Chinese history and culture without overtly engaging in political confrontation.

His first public sculpture to be shown in London will be displayed in the courtyard of Somerset House. In a semi-circle behind the fountains at Somerset House he's arranged 12 oversized bronze heads of animals, each about 4ft high and weighing about 800lb, and each representing a sign of the Chinese zodiac - rat, tiger, rabbit goat, pig and so on.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the arrest of blogger Guo Quan, for posting blog entries deemed to be too radical . He is currently being held in a Nanjing police station on a charge of inciting subversion of state authority.

What the authorities regard as ‘too radical' is open letters to the government calling for democratic change, Reporters Without Borders said. Guo's arrest is further evidence, if any were needed, that the Chinese dictatorship systematically punishes those who express views different from the Party's. We unfortunately fear that Guo could be jailed for a long time, like the 49 other cyber-dissidents currently held in China.

Guo had been under house arrest since February after calling for the creation of a Chinese Netizen Party to combat online censorship. He also announced on 4 February that he intended to sue the US company Google for ensuring - at the Chinese government's request after he created the Chinese New People's Party - that searches for his name on its Chinese-language search engine (http://www.google.cn) yielded no results.

Guo has been posting open letters on his blog calling for pro-democracy reforms ever since he was fired from his post as philosophy professor at Nanjing university.

A dissident Chinese writer in police custody faces trial for inciting subversion as part of an apparent government crackdown on dissents ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

Zhou Yuanzhi, a former tax official, and his wife were taken away by the National Security Bureau of Zhongxiang city.

Zhou is a freelance writer who has published two books in Hong Kong and more than 500 articles under several pen names in overseas Chinese-language magazines and Web sites. Many of his articles have been critiques on social issues and official corruption.

He lost his job in Zhongxiang city's taxation bureau in 1992 and was stripped of his Communist Party membership for contributing an article to Voice of America in defiance of a ban.

After spending over four months in detention, Beijing-based blogger Hu Jia has now been sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for “state subversion,” which, according to his lawyer Li Fangping, is a decision that is likely to draw more international criticism of the country's political controls ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

Hu has ten days in which to file an appeal.

Reporters Without Borders previously said: Together with the Fondation de France, we had just awarded Hu and his wife, Zeng Jinyan, a special prize on 5 December for their courageous stance in defence of human rights in the approach to next year's Olympic Games in Beijing.

We express our solidarity with Hu and Zeng and their six-week-old daughter and we urge the European Union and the rest of the international community to rally to Hu's defence so that he does not become another victim of China's pre-Olympics repression.

Hu participated in a European parliamentary hearing in Brussels on 26 November on the human rights situation in China. He said at one point during the hearing: It is ironic that one of the people in charge of organising the Olympic Games is the head of the Bureau of Public Security, which is responsible for so many human rights violations. It is very serious that the official promises are not being kept before the games.