China’s greatest artist, Ai Weiwei, caused controversy in the summer when he announced he would stay away from the Olympic Games, despite being the creative mind behind Beijing’s Bird’s Nest Stadium.
In an exclusive interview for Index on Censorship‘s ‘Made in China issue’, he told Simon Kirby about challenging state censorship and the status quo.
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Author and dissident Liu Xiabao was arrested on Monday in Beijing. Liu, who is on the board of Chinese PEN, was among 300 intellectuals who signed the Charta 2008 declaration calling for democracy and widespread political reform in China. (more…)
China sought to prevent the awarding of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Chinese dissident Hu Jia on 23 October.
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The Chinese authorities are yet to issue any permits for the designated ‘protest zones’ which were installed as a gesture of openness and freedom in conjunction with the Olympic Games. The state media organ, Xinhua, reported that 77 applications had been put forward by 149 individuals, with three were from international citizens. All of these were either withdrawn, suspended or rejected.
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