LONDON: The dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has accused British authorities of turning their backs on human rights defenders after UK immigration officials rejected his application for a six-month business visa, claiming he had not declared a criminal conviction in his home country.
Ai spent 81 days in secret detention in 2011 after being seized by Chinese security agents during a crackdown on activists who Beijing feared were trying launch a “jasmine revolution”.
He was subsequently ordered to pay a $2.4m fine for allegedly unpaid taxes although supporters said the penalty was a politically motivated punishment for the artist’s fierce criticism of the Communist party.
Having confiscated Ai’s passport in 2011, Chinese authorities finally returned the document last week, allowing him to leave the country for the first time in more than four years. On Thursday he boarded a plane from Beijing to Germany after obtaining a short-term Schengen visa that allows him to enter 26 European countries but not Britain.
The return of Ai’s passport fuelled hopes that he might attend the opening of a major retrospective of his work at the Royal Academy of Arts in September.
However on Thursday Ai claimed British immigration officials had jeopardised those plans after granting him only a 20-day entry visa rather than a six-month business visa.
The artist published a letter sent from the British embassy in Beijing in which an immigration official said only a “restricted” visa could be issued since Ai had “failed to meet business visitor rules”.
It is a matter of public record that you have previously received a criminal conviction in China, and you have not declared this,” added the letter, which was dated 29 July and signed by a Beijing-based “entry clearance manager”.
