Ai Weiwei Harmonized?
We recently translated a post on Ai Weiwei’s blog that can only be described as bitter and despondent. It is also harshly, sweepingly critical of the government, and we speculated that it might be harmonized.
It has been, along with every single post from May (save one candle photo). The original Chinese of that essay can be found preserved here (thanks to jdmartinsen for pointing this out in the comments of our last post), but Ai’s website has now remained unchanged for a couple days. This is pretty unusual, as he often reposts what the censors delete pretty quickly.
There are a couple possible explanations for the quiet, but as we have no inside information we’ll leave you to speculate amongst yourselves in the comments. It is almost certainly not a good sign, though.
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Maybe we could somehow get in touch with him to ensure he hasn’t been silently martyred like Gao Zhisheng.
Ai Weiwei was quoted in China Daily today supported a third-party to oversee Sichuan reconstruction. [http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2009-05/19/content_7789101.htm] I don’t think he’s going to get disappeared like Gao Zhisheng simply because he has a much higher profile.
[...] it would seem Aiweiwei’s famous blog has at long last been edited by the web censors at Sina, or at least, possibly. *** *** *** *** [...]