Artists and politicians fear for missing Ai Weiwei

There is increasing anxiety in the West over the wellbeing of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei as the authorities in Beijing refuse to explain his continued absence, a full three days after he was last seen in public.
 
Ai was travelling with an assistant when he was detained by officials at Beijing airport on Sunday - without reason - while transferring to a flight to Hong Kong. A few hours later, his Beijing studio was searched and several items were confiscated, including hard drives, documents and notebooks.
 
Several of his assistants and his wife, Lu Qing, were taken away for questioning during the raid. No one has been able to contact either Ai or one of the detained assistants, Wen Tao, since. Although Ai has been in trouble with the authorities before, Lu said: "This time it's extremely serious".
 
The international community has rallied behind the controversial artist, whose sunflower seeds exhibition is currently showing at London's Tate Modern.

Among western artists who have shown concern is British sculptor Antony Gormley who called on global cultural institutions "to voice their protest against all kinds of behaviour which we haven't seen since the days of Stalin".

Corinna-Barbara Francis of Amnesty International told The First Post: "The Chinese authorities are clearly nervous that democracy calls in the Middle East might inspire people in China to demand similar change, but a knee-jerk reaction of clamping down on all critics is jeopardising China's rule of law, will prove counter-productive, and appears to be leading China down the path of becoming a police state."

British foreign secretary William Hague called for the Chinese government to "urgently clarify Ai's situation and wellbeing". He added: "The development of independent civil society and application of human rights under the rule of law are essential prerequisites for China's long-term prosperity and stability".
 
A US state department spokesman said they were "deeply concerned" about Ai's disappearance. There was a "trend" in China, the spokesman said, of “forced disappearances, extra-legal detentions, arrests and convictions of rights activists for exercising their internationally recognised human rights".
 
In an unusual move, the popular nationalist tabloid Global Times directly addressed Ai's disappearance in its editorial today. In the English version, it called the international backlash a "reckless collision against China's basic political framework and ignorance of China's judicial sovereignty".
 
It went on to accuse the West of trying to disrupt and undermine Chinese society under the pretence of human rights concerns. "The law," it continued, "will not concede before ‘mavericks’ just because of the Western media's criticism".
 
The Chinese language version featured several extra lines, according to the Guardian. It called Ai "stubborn and unruly", adding: "That's the root cause of Chinese people loathing the west; when the west tries to impose pressure on China using human rights excuses."
 
Ai's disappearance is the latest in a spate of detentions of human rights activists, which have increased since mid-February when online calls for a Jasmine revolution, inspired by the Arab Spring, began. ·