MCLC: Ai loses appeal

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Ai loses appeal
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (7/20/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/world/asia/chinese-artist-loses-appeal-in
-tax-evasion-case.html

Artist Ai Weiwei Loses Appeal Over Tax Evasion Case
By ANDREW JACOBS 

BEIJING — Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist who has emerged as one of the
government’s most nettlesome and high-profile critics, has lost his appeal
of a $2.4 million tax evasion case that was widely seen as an effort to
derail his antigovernment activism.

In a verdict that surprised no one, the Chaoyang District Court on Friday
rejected Mr. Ai’s argument that Chinese tax authorities had ignored their
own procedures when they raided his home studio last year and then bundled
him off for nearly three months of interrogation. Mr. Ai’s disappearance,
and the details of his solitary confinement, provoked international
condemnation. It also failed to silence him.

Mr. Ai was appealing a ruling handed down by Beijing tax authorities in
November. He said he was disappointed by the decision announced on Friday,
but expressed his trademark resolve, saying he would continue to battle
against the authorities by filing lawsuits in other courts.

The police prevented Mr. Ai from attending the hearing, but they were
unable to stop him from speaking with reporters who made their way to his
home studio on the outskirts of the capital.

“If we don’t keep suing them, we’ve lost our basic responsibility as
citizens,” he said.

Foreign journalists and diplomats were barred from the proceedings but a
handful of supporters managed to gather outside the courthouse. Only his
wife and two lawyers were allowed to attend the brief hearing. A city bus
that normally serves the area was ordered to bypass the courthouse.

The government’s case against Mr. Ai began in April 2011, when the
authorities detained him at Beijing International Airport just before he
was to board a plane for Hong Kong. He was taken to a secret detention
center on the city’s outskirts and spent the next 81 days watched round
the clock by rotating pairs of young soldiers. He wasreleased in June of
last year, having lost a sizable portion of his familiar girth.

In their public statements, the government claimed that Mr. Ai’s design
company, Beijing Fake Cultural Development, had evaded 15 million
renminbi, or $2.4 million in taxes. Beyond objecting to procedural
violations, his lawyers have maintained that Mr. Ai was not liable to
prosecution given that his wife, Lu Qing, is the company’s legal owner.
The lawyers also say they have been unable to review the thousands of
pages of financial documents that were seized during the raid and were
barred from photocopying transcripts from an earlier hearing.

Given how tightly the Communist Party controls the judiciary, Pu Zhiqiang,
one of his lawyers, said he had no illusions Mr. Ai would win but he said
he was still infuriated by the way the court handled the case.

“We’re fully aware that China is a morbidly ill society, one in which
rules and regulations are willfully ignored, but it’s appalling how
shamelessly the regime acted in this case,” he said. “The loss is a blow,
but we’re just going to have to work harder to obtain justice.”

As part of the terms of his bail, Mr. Ai was barred from leaving Beijing
for a year. He was also told not to resume his prodigious use of social
media or to speak to the media. He held up his end of the bargain for a
few short weeks.

Despite the government’s public stance that their prosecution was solely
focused on financial crimes, Mr. Ai later told journalists his inquisitors
were uninterested in taxes. He said the interrogations sought to uncover
his role in what overseas Web sites had dubbed the Jasmine Revolution, a
call for Chinese to take to the streets in an Arab Spring-style protest
movement. Mr. Ai denied any role in what turned out to be a nonevent.

The government did not issue any public statement on Friday. But its legal
victory is unlikely to dent Mr. Ai’s finances. In November, his supporters
donated $1.4 million to pay the bond for the tax appeal; Mr. Ai has also
become one of the most sought-after and wealthy Chinese artists, in part
because of the notoriety he has gained as a dissident.

His celebrity will likely be burnished even more in the coming weeks, when
a documentary about him, “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” opens in theaters
across the United States.

Jacob Fromer and Shi Da contributed research.