Exclusive-Thai gallery removes China-focused artworks after 'pressure' from Beijing
By Poppy McPherson and Napat Wesshasartar
BANGKOK, (Reuters) -One of Thailand's top art galleries removed, at China's request, materials about Beijing's treatment of ethnic minorities and Hong Kong from an exhibit on authoritarian governments, according to a curator and communications seen by Reuters.
In what the artists called the latest attempt by Beijing to silence critics overseas, the Bangkok Arts and Cultural Centre changed multiple works by artists in exile in the exhibit on authoritarian governments collaborating across borders.
When Reuters visited on Thursday, some works previously advertised and photographed had been removed, including a multimedia installation by a Tibetan artist, while other pieces had been altered, with the words 'Hong Kong', 'Tibet' and 'Uyghur' redacted, along with the names of the artists.
Three days after the show, "Constellation of Complicity: Visualising the Global Machinery of Authoritarian Solidarity', opened on July 24, Chinese embassy staff, accompanied by Bangkok city officials, "entered the exhibition and demanded its shutdown', said the exhibit's co-curator, Sai, a Myanmar artist who goes by one name.
In a July 30 email seen by Reuters, the gallery said: "Due to pressure from the Chinese Embassy - transmitted through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and particularly the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, our main supporter - we have been warned that the exhibition may risk creating diplomatic tensions between Thailand and China."
The email said the gallery had "no choice but to make certain adjustments", including obscuring the names of the Hong Kong, Tibetan and Uyghur artists.
Several days later, Sai told Reuters, the embassy demanded further removals.
The Chinese embassy in Bangkok and foreign ministry in Beijing, and Thailand's foreign ministry did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration referred Reuters to the gallery, which did not respond to an email seeking comment. A gallery representative at the exhibit said the team had agreed not to comment on the issue.
'AUTHORITARIAN PRESSURE'
Rights groups say China carries out a sophisticated campaign of harassment against critics overseas that has often extended into the art world, allegations Beijing has denied.
Sai, co-founder of Myanmar Peace Museum, the organisation that put together the exhibition, said the removed pieces included Tibetan and Uyghur flags and postcards featuring Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as a postcard depicting links between China and Israel.
"It is tragically ironic that an exhibition on authoritarian cooperation has been censored under authoritarian pressure,' he said. 'Thailand has long been a refuge for dissidents. This is a chilling signal to all exiled artists and activists in the region."
Sai said he was speaking from overseas, where he had fled after Thai police sought to find him. The superintendent of Pathumwan Police Station, who oversees the gallery's Bangkok neighbourhood, told Reuters he had received no reports of such an incident.
Thailand this year returned to China 40 Uyghurs, members of a mainly Muslim ethnic minority numbering about 10 million in China's far western region of Xinjiang, in a secretive deportation. U.N. experts had warned they would be at risk of torture, ill-treatment and "irreparable harm". China denies abusing Uyghurs.
The Bangkok exhibition also features works by artists in exile from Xinjiang as well as Russia, Iran and Syria.
China has been steadily increasing its influence in Southeast Asia, where governments are balancing cooperation with the regional giant against concerns over sovereignty.
Beijing recently sought unsuccessfully to block screenings in New Zealand of a Philippine documentary on that country's struggles in contested parts of the South China Sea amid alleged harassment from the Chinese coast guard and maritime militia, local media reported. It was pulled from a film festival in the Philippines in March due to "external factors", the filmmakers said.
BLACK SCREEN
Chinese officials returned to the Bangkok gallery on Wednesday, asked to remove another flyer and reiterated 'enforcement of the One China policy', Sai said, citing updates from contacts.
That policy, observed by governments that have relations with Beijing, acknowledges Beijing's position that the People's Republic of China is the sole legitimate government representing all of China, including Taiwan. China has never renounced the use of force over the self-governed island. Taiwan's government says only Taiwan's people can decide their future.
Foreign governments refer to Tibet and Xinjiang as part of China.
Works withdrawn from the Bangkok exhibit by Tibetan artist Tenzin Mingyur Paldron included video of Tibetans carrying Palestinian flags while calling for accountability for genocide and a film titled "Listen to Indigenous People".
The works were previously advertised, and Sai shared images of them previously on display with Reuters.
'By forcing (the gallery) to remove significant parts of my work, the Chinese government has once again demonstrated that it desperately wishes to cut Tibetans off from the rest of the world,' said Paldron, adding that China did not 'want its complicity in other colonialisms and genocides to be recognised'.
'Who are museums for?" he said. "They should be for the people, not dictators of any ideology."
When Reuters visited, video monitors showed a black screen. A film by a Uyghur artist played, but there was a black mark where her name had been.
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