Outspoken Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei said yesterday he was “very happy to be free” on bail after more than two months in police custody during a major government crackdown on dissent.
“I’m fine. I’m very happy to be free and I’m very happy to be back with my family,” the 54-year-old Ai, whose detention in early April sparked an outcry in the West and repeated calls for his release, said.
Police released the artist-activist after he confessed to tax evasion and because he suffers from a “chronic disease”, the official Xinhua news agency said late Wednesday.
When asked about the conditions of his release, Ai said: “I’m on bail so I can’t give out any information. I can’t do interviews.”
The release of Ai, who was taken into custody at Beijing’s international airport on April 3 while trying to board a flight to Hong Kong, was somewhat unexpected as authorities had suggested he was involved in massive tax fraud.
Mr Ai was released because of “his good attitude in confessing his crimes”, his willingness to repay the taxes he owes, and on medical grounds, Xinhua said. The artist has diabetes.
At Mr Ai’s home in Caochangdi, an artist district dotted with studios on the northern outskirts of Beijing, dozens of reporters milled around yesterday morning, but there was no sign of the activist.
There was no visible police presence, an AFP reporter witnessed.
Mr Ai is known as much for his activism as for his art – a fact that earned the government critic more than two months in detention but a surprise release on bail late on Wednesday.
The son of a poet revered by China’s early Communist leaders, Mr Ai helped to design the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium for the 2008 Beijing Games, an event that brought worldwide prestige to the ruling Communist Party.
But the burly avant-garde artist has referred to them as “gangsters” and involvement in controversial social campaigns have since made him a thorn in the government’s side.
Subject to frequent detentions and other official trouble, Mr Ai was detained in Beijing on April 3 while trying to board a flight to Hong Kong. Police searched his Beijing studio and later accused him of massive tax fraud.
Mr Ai, 54, is one of many government critics who have been jailed, detained or disappeared into police custody since February, when calls for anti-government protests in China – echoing those in the Arab world – rattled authorities.
His detention is largely in keeping with his public image as government gadfly.
His father, Ai Qing, was a celebrated poet and member of the Communist party who was later denounced and sent to a labour camp. He was subsequently “rehabilitated” and is again revered today.
The younger Ai came to prominence in the late 1970s as a member of an avant-garde group of artists known as The Stars. He then moved to the US, where he lived for more than a decade, returning home in the 1990s.
As an artist, probably his best-known project was his collaboration with Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron on Beijing’s striking national stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Mr Ai called the Games a “pretend smile” by China.
But the round-faced, bearded Mr Ai soon fell foul of authorities.
“This society is not efficient, it’s inhuman in many ways politically,” he said in November while under a previous, brief house arrest.