Sawtell's Ai Weiwei smears are shameful
Wednesday 12 September 2012
Printable
EmailJeff Sawtell should be ashamed of himself for his ugly smears of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in his review of the documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (M Star 23 August).
He uses age-old propaganda techniques to bamboozle readers, including guilt by association (Michael Bloomberg once praised Ai Weiwei), salacious inference (his parents were declared "rightists" in 1958 and he watched the Tiananmen Square massacre on US TV) and blind repetition of the Chinese government's official line.
In contrast, when Ai Weiwei was detained by the Chinese government in 2011 Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience.
They noted that his imprisonment was "a troubling development in a widening crackdown on dissent that has seen dozens of activists detained over the last few months."
Human Rights Watch also supported Ai Weiwei.
Ian Sinclair
London N19
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