A day and a half after police detained him Sunday morning in Bejing, there is still no word from internationally renowned Chinese artist and activist
Ai Weiwei. The artist has contacted neither his wife nor his lawyer, and fears continue to mount that he is being held in a form of legal limbo amid a weeks-long crackdown on intellectuals in China,
described by a Human Rights Watch observer as "an attempt to decapitate civil society by taking away its most visible figures."
Given Ai Weiwei's high-profile status both internationally (he recently realized a prestigious commission for the
Tate's Turbine Hall) and nationally (he is the son of one of the country's most famous modern poets
Ai Qing), his detention is being read as an escalation in what has already been one of the most severe crackdowns in years on activism in China. The current operation against the artist — who is well known for speaking out against the Chinese government in the past, and who has recently expressed fear for his life, and
pondered the possibility of moving to Europe — seems designed to send one message: No one, however well known, shall be allowed to speak out.
According to the account of the arrest by the artist's assistant
Jennifer Ng,
published in the New York Times, uniformed officers detained Ai as the pair passed through customs at
Beijing International Airport early Sunday morning, en route to Hong Kong for business. The officers instructed Ng to board the plane by herself, saying that Ai "had other business." Police have refused to divulge any details of the artist's whereabouts, or even acknowledge taking him into custody, despite legal requirements that they notify family members if a detention is longer than a day.
Also on Sunday, more than a dozen police officers raided the artist's Beijing studio, cutting off power to his immediate neighborhood. Authorities confiscated computers and documents and arrested close to a dozen employees, both Chinese citizens and foreigners (all have since been released). Police had already searched the studio some three times in the past weeks to check up on the documents of non-Chinese employees.
Ai's home was also raided, and his wife
Lu Qing arrested, though she was released late last night.
Lu told the Associated Press that police offered no hints as to where her husband was, when he might be released, or what he was charged with. "They asked me about Ai Weiwei's work and the articles he posted online," she said. "I told them that everything that Ai did was very public, and if they wanted to know his opinions and work they could just look at the Internet."
Six weeks ago, an online call for a "Jasmine Revolution" similar to the uprisings taking place in the Middle East triggered a sharp reaction from the Chinese security apparatus,
which has detained dozens of prominent lawyers and intellectuals, holding them in detention or disappearing them completely.
According to the New York Times's account, Ai had initially used his celebrated Twitter account specifically to discourage protesters from heeding calls to go into the streets. However, he had since been using Twitter to keep an informal tally of detentions associated with the crackdown.
The detention, which comes months after the
Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to jailed Chinese dissident
Liu Xiaobo, has already sparked a diplomatic backlash. German foreign minister
Guido Westerwelle issued a statement on the matter today: "I appeal to the Chinese government to urgently provide clarification, and I expect Ai Weiwei to be released immediately."
Amnesty International has called the detention a "troubling development in a widening crackdown on dissent."
Meanwhile, in what is a small taste of the damage that the detention does to China's international image, New York-based experimental architect and
Cooper Union professor
Lebbeus Woods announced publicly that he would not accept another commission in China until Ai Weiwei was released, making waves in architectural circles. With
Christoph A. Kumpusch, Woods is currently working on a "Light Pavilion" in Chengdu.
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