Chinese authorities on Thursday rejected activist artist Ai Weiwei’s (艾未未) second and final appeal against a US$2.4 million tax fine, a ruling he said sprang from a “barbaric and backward legal system.”
The internationally known artist, who has long used his celebrity to highlight injustice in China, and his supporters have interpreted the penalty as official retaliation against his activism. The fine was levied last year, soon after he was released from detention in an overall crackdown on dissent.
Ai and his company, Fake Cultural Development Ltd, accused the Chinese Tax Bureau of violating laws in handling witnesses, gathering evidence and company accounts. The Beijing No. 2 People’s Intermediate Court rejected those claims and the ruling cannot be appealed again.
Ai said he was disappointed, but not surprised.
“What surprises me is that this society, which is developing at such a rapid rate today, still has the most barbaric and backward legal system,” he said. “I think it’s a bad omen.”
Ai said that authorities have repeatedly denied him his legal rights and failed to follow basic procedures. He said the Beijing court should have given him written notice of its judgment three days in advance, but instead notified him by phone on Wednesday, the day before the ruling.
The short notice meant his lawyers were not able to attend because they were traveling, he said.
Ai said authorities also have yet to return his passport, effectively barring him from leaving the country. The passport was taken after Ai was detained without explanation for three months last year. Authorities had said they would give his passport back after a probationary period that ended in June.
Not having the passport has kept him from going to exhibitions of his work and other engagements in Washington, New York and Berlin, he said.
A sculptor, photographer and installation artist, Ai has used his art and online profile to draw attention to injustices in Chinese society and the need for greater transparency and rule of law.
Following his release from detention, his company was ordered to pay 15 million yuan (US$2.4 million) in back taxes and fines. Ai paid the US$2.4 million guarantee in part with donations made via wire transfers or from supporters who stuffed cash into envelopes or wrapped bills around fruit and threw the items into his yard. That deposit will now be automatically collected by the tax bureau, Ai said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver