BBC Radio 4’s PM programme is currently holding a “privacy commission”, chaired by Sir Michael Lyons, Lord Faulks and Baroness Liddell, examining where the balance lies between an individual’s right to privacy and the public’s right to know. (more…)
When dissident artist Ai Weiwei was freed last Wednesday, his four associates were also nabbed back in April, were disturbingly absent.
Now it seems that those four — his driver, accountant, assistant and a designer — have also been released, according to both Ai’s sister and a volunteer working with the artist.
Zhang Jinsong, Hu Mingfen, Wen Tao and Liu Zhenggang were all released on bail Thursday and Friday of last week, the two said.
None of the four has as yet spoken to the media and confirmed their release.
Their freedom means one less pressure on Ai.
According to the terms of his bail, he is not allowed to talk about his case, the artist explained. He will also be unlikely to be using any of the tools of his former dissidence — his wit, his art, and Twitter — to needle the government.
No formal charges have been brought against Ai, but Chinese media says he has confessed to tax evasion.
A very good analysis of the Ai case in the context of the Chinese legal system is given by China legal expert Jerome A. Cohen in The Wall Street Journal.
His release, says Cohen, “represents a humiliating climbdown for Beijing… [and] nothing can conceal their profound embarrassment.”
Ai and his four friends may have been freed, but, as Amnesty International reminds us, at least 130 activists, lawyers, bloggers and low level “netizens” are still detained or missing in China.
Activists used popular Russian social network, Vkontakte, and Twitter hashtag, #2206v1900, to organise protest action in towns all over Belarus on 22 June. Over 1, 000 people gathered for a rally in Minsk despite warnings to would-be protesters from local police about “possible administrative charges for participating in unsanctioned protests”. Throughout the day Vkontakte group, “Movement of the Future”, with over 200, 000 members, tweeted regularly. A total of 450 protesters were arrested during the “silent” anti-government demonstrations, many remain in detention.
Earlier this week I was working with the ballet maestro Jean-Pascal Cabardos, who trained Billy for Billy Elliot. Not that Little Black Fish has been dancing en pointe (we were working on texts), though I have indulged in the ballet craze that has swept London and joined classes at Everybody Ballet, dancing whenever it took my mood and wearing whatever I felt like wearing.
This concept of ballet open to everyone is incredible when reading Her life as a Persian Ballerina. It is an insightful account of life as a dancer and choreographer in today’s Iran — the compromises to approach and style required. As well as the more obvious clothing restrictions, the more sensual performances are assigned to male performers. It also touches on the representation of dance and its psychological effects.
It’s hard to imagine a time when things were different. But they were. My introduction to ballet began in 1970s’ Tehran. At the time the Ministry of Culture had established the Iranian National Ballet Company, performing Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty among other classics at Tehran’s Roudaki Hall. The company collaborated with dance schools worldwide and Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn visited Iran in 1969 and set up Le Corsaire.
Needless to say the Islamic government terminated the company in 1979. A concise and very interesting history of dance in Iran can be read here, written by Nima Kiann who founded a successor company, Les Ballet Persans, in Sweden in 2001.