N***Y
发帖数: 19 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 Military 讨论区 】
发信人: NYBOY (阳光帅男), 信区: Military
标 题: New York Times: Thousands Chip In to Help Artist Pay Fine
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Sun Nov 6 13:48:00 2011, 美东)
BEIJING — In the days since the Chinese government delivered a punitive $2.
4 million tax bill to the artist Ai Weiwei, thousands of people have
responded by donating money in a gesture that is at once benevolent and
subversive.
More than 20,000 people have together contributed more than $550,000 since
last Tuesday, when tax officials gave Mr. Ai 15 days to come up with an
amount that was more than three times the original sum he was accused of
evading in taxes.
“It’s surprising, it has really changed my perspective on people,” he
said in a telephone interview Sunday, describing how scores of supporters,
some of whom traveled from distant cities, have been delivering cash to his
home.
One of China’s best known artists and a voluble government critic, Mr. Ai
was detained last April and held for 81 days at an undisclosed location,
ostensibly on tax evasion charges, according to the state media. Mr. Ai,
however, insists his prosecution is politically motivated.
During his confinement, he said his questioners were only interested in
discussing his activism, particularly his role in the so-called Jasmine
Revolution, pro-democracy protests inspired by events in the Arab World. Mr.
Ai says he was not involved in organizing the protests, which were
effectively stymied by the Chinese authorities.
Since his release last June, Mr. Ai, 54, has kept a low profile, one of the
conditions of his bail. But the imposed silence ill-suited Mr. Ai, who has
increasingly bridled against the restrictions, among them a prohibition
against talking to the news media or communicating publicly through Weibo,
China’s Twitter-like microblogging service.
Since the amount of his fine became public last Tuesday, Mr. Ai appears to
have shed any reluctance to speak out and has lambasted the tax penalty as
naked retribution for his critiques against the governing Communist Party.
The donations began pouring in on Thursday, many of them delivered
electronically and accompanied by politically tinged comments. “You helped
them to design the Bird’s Nest, but they sent you into a bird cage,” said
one donor, referring to Mr. Ai’s role in designing the Olympic stadium in
Beijing. “You charged them fees, but now they fine you more than hundreds
of times that in blood and sweat.”
Some contributions have been small — symbolic, fractional sums of the total
15 million renminbi fine — while others are in the thousands of dollars.
Mr. Ai said one businessman offered him 1 million renminbi, about $157,000,
but he turned it down, saying he preferred to receive smaller sums. Mr. Ai
has insisted on describing the money as loans that he will later repay.
On Sunday, after his Weibo account was disabled, dozens of people began
arriving at the gate of his studio on the outskirts of the capital. Mr. Ai
said a number of people had folded 100 renminbi notes into airplanes and
tossed them over the walls of his compound.
“Over the past three years, during all the efforts I’ve made, sometimes I
felt like I was crying alone in a dark tunnel,” he said. “But now people
have a way to express their true feelings. This is a really, really
beautiful event.” |
|
