China frees rebel artist after tax 'confession'

ARTIST Ai Weiwei, the most high-profile target of a sweeping crackdown on activists in China, has returned home after nearly three months in detention.
Chinese authorities released Ai on Wednesday, apparently ending a prosecution that had become a focal point of criticism of China's eroding human rights record.
''I'm released, I'm home, I'm fine,'' Ai said in English after being reached on his mobile phone. ''In legal terms, I'm - how do you say? - on bail. So I cannot give any interviews.''

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Dissident artist Ai Weiwei greets the media outside his Beijing studio after his release. Photo: Reuters

Photographs of Ai taken as he arrived after his release at his studio in the Caochangdi arts district of north-east Beijing showed him smiling, his trademark bushy beard streaked with grey.
The release of Ai, 54, who is widely known and admired outside of China, appeared to be a rare example of Beijing bowing to international pressure on human rights, though the terms of his release may silence him for months or even years.
Xinhua News Agency said Ai confessed to tax evasion, accusations his family had long denied and that activists had denounced as a false premise for detaining him. His family and supporters say he was being punished for speaking out strongly against the ruling Communist Party.
Ai was the most prominent of hundreds of people detained since China intensified a broad crackdown on critics of the government in February, when anonymous calls for mass protests modelled after the revolutions in the Middle East percolated on the internet.
China's move to douse any flicker of dissent was the harshest in years outside of the restive ethnic regions in the far west. The vast majority of those detained in the crackdown were, like Ai, held in secret locations for weeks with no legal justification.
Chinese officials announced in May that authorities were investigating Ai on suspicion of tax evasion. Ai's supporters said the tax inquiry was a pretext to silence one of the most vocal critics of the Chinese Communist Party.
Ai is presumed to be well connected because he is the son of Ai Qing, one of the most beloved poets of modern China. His detention was almost certain to have been approved by top Chinese leaders. It is unclear what kinds of discussions took place within elite political circles that ultimately led to his release.
Ai's detention had drawn condemnation from political leaders and artists including sculptor Anish Kapoor and author Salman Rushdie.
''Without the wave of international support for Ai and the popular expressions of dismay and disgust about the circumstances of his disappearance and detention, it's highly unlikely the Chinese government would have released him,'' Phelim Kine, an Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch said.
''The public announcement of his release signals that the Chinese government has had to respond to this pressure and that the cost-benefit ratio of continuing to detain him was no longer tenable.''
Gao Ge, Ai's sister, said that Ai's wife, Lu Qing, received a telephone call on Wednesday and was told to go to a police station in Beijing.
''All I care about is that he's home now,'' Gao said.
Liu Xiaoyuan, Ai's lawyer, said in a Twitter post that as long as the taxes were paid, Ai would probably remain free.
NEW YORK TIMES, AP