CHINA TO COMPENSATE EVICTED BEIJING ARTISTS
A small group of artists who held a daring protest in the heart of Beijing against forced evictions last month will be compensated for giving up claims to property, a representative of the artists said Monday, according to the New York Times.
The group, from an art district known as Zheng Yang, negotiated the compensation after a single meeting with local officials, said Zhang Jun, the representative. That group, along with artists from a district called 008, protested along a wide ceremonial avenue, Chang’an Jie, that runs between Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City in late February after about one hundred men wearing white masks and armed with iron rods swarmed through the two districts and beat several artists. The attackers had been sent by a real estate developer who wanted the land, the artists said.
Chinese leaders are especially sensitive to protests in the heart of Beijing. Rallies there can evoke the student-led demonstrations in 1989 that led to a bloody crackdown by the central government. The nearly two dozen artists marched only five hundred yards before security forces broke up the protest, according to a Twitter feed from artist Ai Weiwei, who, though not threatened with eviction, was among the protesters.
Zhang declined to say how much the Zheng Yang artists will receive in compensation. Wu Yuren, a representative of the artists at 008, who are in talks for their own compensation, said the Zheng Yang artists would receive a total of one million dollars. The English-language edition of Global Times, an official newspaper, reported Monday that the group would receive $880,000. The amount may be divided among dozens of people living in the district.
Zhang said it was unclear who would pay the compensation, because the ties between the real estate developer and the government of the Chaoyang District of Beijing were murky. He said the negotiations went smoothly and took place with district officials, though police officers acted as intermediaries.
“If they had been so rational and polite three months ago, everything would simply be fine,” Zhang said. “We just want to be treated as humans.”
