Hasta La Ideas

Just shy of a year ago, outspoken artist and the designer behind Beijing’s Birds Nest stadium, Ai Weiwei, was detained by Chinese authorities and beaten so badly that he later had to have surgery for a cerebral hemorrhage, all due to his speaking out about that government’s response to its disastrous May 2008 earthquake. While he’s recovered and appeared both on CNN and in a New Yorker profile talking about the incident, the Guardian is reporting that Weiwei has once again been assaulted, this time by Chinese police. According to the artist, he went to file a complaint about the previous attack when he was given some bureaucratic runaround and was then later attacked by “maybe 10” undercover police officers who pushed, kicked, and tore at he and his assistant. He told the Guardian the police yelled at him, “If you want justice, go back to the US.” Here’s a bit more:

“I tried to go through the judicial system to make a report [about the earlier assault], but no one will give us any answers. They have pushed us from one place to another.

“China’s judicial system is totally corrupt and paralysed. Even with a case that people internationally know, they don’t give a shit.”

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