'Killing the chicken to scare the monkey'- world-famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei on Self-Censorship // Press Freedom In China Continues To Deteriorate

By Dilip -
'Intimidation is the most efficient tool for those in power to scare away people’s sense of independence. Not only can they successfully expunge ideas from the public sphere and purge those who dare to express these ideas and attitudes, they can also brainwash anyone who simply wants to function as a part of society' :  Ai Weiwei

 NB - the struggle against censorship and for freedom of thought has to be global, or it cannot succeed - DS

It's been a bad month for critics of the Chinese government, starting with the flood of arrests ahead of the Tiananmen Square anniversary. Now officials are battling a single man: their longtime opponent, the world-famous artist Ai Weiwei. This month, Ai withdrew his work from a show at Beijing's influential Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, a tribute to the late scholar Hans Van Dijk, with whom he worked closely. It was a move made in protest: In a series of correspondences that surfaced online, UCCA chief Xue Mei admitted to removing Ai's name from a press release, bowing to pressure from the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The incident follows a similar one this spring, when Ai's name and work were "wiped" from a retrospective in Shanghai to placate the government. In an email to the Huffington Post Ai analyzed the culture of "self-censorship" at play in China's art world, drawing a line between the government's actions and an old Chinese saying, which translates to "killing the chicken to scare the monkey." 
On Self-Censorship
By Ai Weiwei
Censorship in China is enforced 24 hours a day, and operates in every channel of communication. Its impact resounds in all forms of individual expression related to the public, be it a publication, an art show, or a website. For over 60 years, policies of censorship have been a pervasive part of society throughout the nation.
AI WEIWEI SELF CENSORSHIP
Within a month, my name has been omitted from two exhibitions in China. Most recently, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing was showing three of my pieces in an exhibition commemorating an old friend and colleague, but were afraid to mention my name and my relationship with the institution that my friend and I built together -- the first Chinese contemporary art institution ever created.
When these incidents are observed as part of a bigger picture, the severity of the issue can be clearly understood. This strict censorship of information and expression affects not only myself, but the artist community and the whole of society. For mixed reasons, institutions are self-censoring in order to survive, some even to reap benefits.
In a conversation with Philip Tinari, director of the UCCA, he mentioned “threats” from above that led to the omission of my name in the exhibition. In China, party policies may not affect you as an individual, but work through your organization, your landlord, your relatives and your associates. Even if you act independently, the power influences those around you.
Intimidation is the most efficient tool for those in power to scare away people’s sense of independence. Not only can they successfully expunge ideas from the public sphere and purge those who dare to express these ideas and attitudes, they can also brainwash anyone who simply wants to function as a part of society. In order to gain financial and personal security, people need to conform to behavioral standards without asking any questions or attempting to tell right from wrong. Censorship is a system that creates absolute power and paralyses society, removing the people’s courage to make judgments or bear social responsibility.
Censorship and self-censorship act together in this society to ensure that independent thinking and creativity cannot exist without bowing to authority. More often than not, self-censoring and the so-called threats related to it, are based on a memory or a vague sense of danger, and not necessarily a direct instruction from high officials. The Chinese saying sha ji jing hou puts it succinctly: killing the chicken to scare the monkey. Punishing an individual as an example to others again incites this policy of intimidation that can resound for lifetimes and even generations.
Unlike most parts of the world, China’s internet is based on local area networks (LAN), but even this limited information flow is already making the authorities extremely nervous. Not only does online censorship go against the essential character of the Internet, it has already led to many arrests and sentences in persecution of freedom of expression. As a result, self-censorship is on the rise, while the demand for freedom grows at an equally rapid pace. These are parallel challenges facing us in the materialistic world in which we live.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/19/ai-weiwei-self-censorship-ullens_n_5509225.html?utm_hp_ref=arts

 Press Freedom In China Continues To Deteriorate
The latest report from the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China shows no improvement in the conditions for journalists in the country. The FCCC, which represents 122 news organizations worldwide, found that a staggering 99 percent of participants feel that conditions in China for media personnel do not meet international standards. Eighty percent reported feeling like conditions have gotten worse or stayed the same. Read the full FCCC report here. The survey showed a 10 percent increase in people who felt that conditions were deteriorating compared to last May. Respondents reported experiencing attempts to preempt their coverage, restrictions on travel, blocking of websites and harassment of news assistants and sources. More than half of respondents with news assistants said that their assistants have experienced at least one instance of harassment or intimidation. "I and several other journalists were manhandled away from the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing by plainclothes and uniformed police when reporting on the MH370 relatives' protest in April 2014," Calum MacLeod of USA Today said.
"One research assistant was detained overnight and an intern was pressured to spy on us, and then forced to quit the internship when he refused to cooperate with the Public Security Bureau," another US media organization responded. Not one participant responded that conditions in China have improved. Tensions over press freedom reached a high point in 2014 as the government increased its control over foreign media coverage and continued to intervene in local news outlets... About 2/3 of respondents said they experienced interference, harassment or violence while attempting to report in China. Among them, 10% -- primarily TV journalists -- said they were subjected to manhandling or use of physical force. Attempts to cover the trial of New Citizens Movement leader Xu Zhiyong in Beijing in early 2014 resulted in multiple reports of physical violence..
http://cpj.org/blog/fccc_report_may_2014.pdf
China arrests prominent human rights lawyer
See also
"Tell the world! Tell the world!" Tien An Men, June 4, 1989
The People's Republic of Amnesia - Remembering A Forgotten Tiananmen
Minxin Pei - China’s historical amnesia
The Crises of Party Culture: by Yang Guang
The crises of Party culture become clear with a single glance. The CPC is called the ruling party, yet it operates according to secret party rules: this is an identity crisis. Its formal ceremonies and slogans are like those of an extremist church, and it has long lost its utopian doctrine that stirred the passion of the people: this is an ideological crisis. It tells beautiful lies while accepting bribes and keeping mistresses: this is a moral crisis. The totalitarian system is in the process of collapsing, yet political reform is not in the foreseeable future: this is a political crisis. It has corrupted traditional values and also rejected universal values, rendering Party members and government officials at a spiritual loss: this is a crisis of values.




Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the PUDR stat
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certainty which a c
Read more

Albert Camus's lecture 'The Human Crisis', New York, March 1946. 'No cause justifies the murder of innocents'

By Dilip -
The morning after a great historical crisis, you feel as sad and sick as after a heavy night. But there is no aspirin for historical hangovers .. The world is no longer divided into the just or unjust, but into masters and slaves. He who is right is he who enslaves.  Albert Camus     La crise de l'homme : THE HUMAN CRISIS   (Text read by Viggo Mortensen on March 28 2016)   Ladies and Gentlemen: when I was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States of America, I felt some doubt and hesitation. I am really not old enough to give lectures, and I am more at ease with the process of thinking than I am making categorical statements... since I don't feel I have any claim on what is generally called the truth. I shared this reservation and was very politely told that my personal opinion didn't matter. What mattered was that I'd be able to offer some facts about France so that my listeners could form their own opinions. It was then suggested that I might
Read more

Etel Adnan - To Be In A Time Of War

By Dilip -
NB: Etel Adnan, writer, poet, artist and musician was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. This prose poem is the final chapter of her book  In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country .  Read more about her here  - DS To Be In A Time Of War To say nothing, do nothing, mark time, to bend, to straighten up, to blame oneself, to stand, to go toward the window, to change one’s mind in the process, to return to one’s chair, to stand again, to go to the bathroom, to close the door, to then open the door, to go to the kitchen, to not eat nor drink, to return to the table, to be bored, to take a few steps on the rug, to come close to the chimney, to look at it, to find it dull, to turn left until the main door, to come back to the room, to hesitate, to go on, just a bit, a trifle, to stop, to pull the right side of the curtain, then the other side, to stare at
Read more

After the Truth Shower

By Dilip -
Dear Readers Thank you for reading my blog for the past eleven years. (This is a link to the new one) During this time it has had nearly 1.7 million hits; and I have posted over 9500 posts covering a variety of themes. From July 11 to 19, 2022, my blog was withdrawn by the Blogger administration on account of what its machinery suspected to be 'Impersonation'. It took over a week and the efforts of several well-wishers to get it back online I thank them all for their kindness and goodwill  My blog has always been - and remains - non-commercial. I have used it for academic purposes; and to foster a culture of debate and informed commentary in civil society. Because it contains a large amount of material gathered and collated for over a decade, I cannot afford to lose its contents. I hope it will remain undisturbed now and function as an archive. However, I have decided to use a new blog on WordPress as a platform for my newest comments and posts The new blog is titled After the
Read more

Rudyard Kipling: critical essay by George Orwell (1942)

By Dilip -
Mother of Cities to me, For I was born in her gate, Between the palms and the sea, Where the world-end steamers wait  Rudyard Kipling , To the City of Bombay "Few people who have criticized England from the inside have said bitterer things about her than this gutter patriot" : George Orwell IT WAS a pity that Mr. Eliot should be so much on the defensive in the long essay with which he prefaces this selection of Kipling's poetry, but it was not to be avoided, because before one can even speak about Kipling one has to clear away a legend that has been created by two sets of people who have not read his works. Kipling is in the peculiar position of having been a byword for fifty years. During five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there. Mr. Eliot never satisfactorily explains this fact, because in answering the shal
Read more