By Tenzin Lekhden
DHARAMSHALA, Nov. 15: Shanghai-born artist Badiucao, who recently painted Kanter’s “Free Tibet” shoe, opened his first international solo exhibition in Brescia, Italy on Saturday despite protest from the Chinese government. Chinese officials have described the artworks being “full of anti-Chinese lies” and protest.
Badiucao’s exhibition features artworks that are critical of China’ human rights abuses and mocks the totalitarian regime’s leaders. A familiar picture is that of Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh, the popular cartoon character is now largely censored on the Chinese internet. The exhibition also displays a series of paintings with the “No Beijing 2020 theme.”
The Chinese embassy in Italy provoked by the pictures, in a letter to Brescia’s mayor, asked for the exhibition to be cancelled. But the Italian town’s deputy mayor called the letter “an intrusion on a city’s artistic, cultural decision,” nonetheless commented that the complaint “attracted more attention.”
Museum officials and local politicians decided to change the title as a symbol of free speech, CNN writes. The exhibition, which will be showcased for three months starting today, will have a new title: “La Cina (non) e Vicina,” which, in English, translates to “China is (not) near.” The Brescia Museum Foundation’s president, Francesca Bazoli, in solidarity said that going ahead with the exhibition “was a matter of freedom of artistic expression.”
“It’s almost impossible (to) avoid offending the Chinese government these days,” Badiucao told CNN in an interview. “Anything could be sensitive; anything could be problematic.”
A recent Freedom House report accused China’s repression as transnational by employing various methods of intimidation to undermine rule of law in other countries. The complaint lodged against the exhibition, seeking to cancel it, is one of many methods used by CCP to undermine freedom of expression and speech in other countries.
2 Responses
This is one success story of not relenting to Chinese interference and intimidation. The communist Chinese have no luck. The world treated them with much wariness and many countries and companies bulked under their bullying tactics. Airlines, restaurants and individuals were blacklisted who supported Tibet, Taiwan or the Dalai Lama. They had a field day to isolate and deny the Dalai Lama to visit Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka, Thailand, Korea and Taiwan. The Dalai Lama was restricted from both travelling and meeting world leaders because of Chinese pressure. Among world leaders, George Bush senior was the first US President to meet HH The Dalai Lama, followed by Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Obama.Even though many Tibetans tend to belief Trump as being strong on China, in reality, he never even mentioned the name of Tibet or Dalai Lama in his five years in the White House! Even so, it has to be admitted that he signed an historic Tibet policy Bill to pre-empt Chinese move on the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.
Among British leaders, John Major was the first British leader who met the Dalai Lama followed by Gordon Brown who met him at the Lambeth Palace rather than Downing Street for fear of “upsetting the Chinese”. Other British leaders who met HH was PM David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg.
German chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nikolai Sarkozy took the bold step to meet Dalai Lama. In Australia, it was PM Paul Keating who was the first Australian PM to meet HH followed by PM John Howard. In Canada PM Paul Martin and Stephen Harper have met the Dalai Lama but none of the younger generation of leaders elected in the Trump era have met the Dalai Lam for fear of offending the communist Chinese. Nelson Mandela met HH but his successor the corrupt Jacob Zumba didn’t even issue a visa to the Dalai Lama despite three attempts at the invitation of HH’s good friend Bishop Desmond Tutu.
At the Vatican, The polish Pope John Paul met HH quite a few times and later the Austrian Pope Benedict Ratzinger was the last pope to meet the Dalai Lama. However, the present pope avoided to meet HH in order to suck up to the Chinese communists. Pope Francis is an Argentinian and he was a supporter of the Jorge Rafael Videla dictatorship which killed, kidnapped or disappeared 10, 000 people in the dirty war of 1976-1983 against alleged leftists and subversives in Argentina. He, then known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio is rumoured to have kidnapped priests during the dictatorship and even handed them over to the regime. So, it goes to show that Pope Francis has been a friend of dictators and no doubt, bad habits die hard as the saying goes, he is a very good friend of the Chinese dictators and hence avoided meeting HH The Dalai Lama. Many leaders of small nations are more ethical than bigger and more powerful nations. One such nation is the Czech Republic. Its redoubtable leader, the late Vaclav Havel was one such leader who knew the evil of communism and sympathised with the cause of Tibet and became great friend of HH The Dalai Lama. Today, the Czech Republic has one of the most devoted supporters of Tibet in Europe.
The reason, why, I am writing this is, the times when other world leaders and communities shared a sense of camaraderie with communist China is over as demonstrated by the Mayor of Brescia’s stand against the intimidation and bullying by the CCP for staging an art show by a Chinese dissident, Badiucao. Not every one is standing up to China of course as we have seen recently of the cancellation of a book on Xi. It was cancelled after the intervention of the local CCP consulate. However, the trend is growing and it will only grow. More and more leaders will reject or ignore the Chinese interference as China’s image is battered by its militarism, war mongering and genocide perpetrated in Tibet and East Turkistan.
A large scale delegation of Senate and House Law makers have visited Taiwan and have visited India where they met Tibetan representatives as well. The rules of the game has changed. The gladiators are coming to our door step rather than we go to knock at their doors. Now, our main effort should be TO GAIN INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION OF THE TIBETAN GOVERNMENT IN DHARAMSALA. The more we gain recognition, the more the Chinese will feel the need to talk to us. This is how we have to leverage against the Chinese commies. If we bend our knees and plead for talks, they will put their foot on our head and ask us to repent for our audacity to stand up to them. They will then demand our souls to be handed to them for safe keeping. We will be nothing more than a shadow of ourselves. We must treat them the way they treat us and teach them a lesson or two that they will never forget in their history.
I love this artist !
Thank you Italie !
With my best Tashi Deleg Ghislaine .