China police detain artist who documented migrant evictions

BEIJING: Beijing- based artist Hua Yong has been detained by police after documenting the mass eviction of migrant workers from the Chinese capital, his friends said yesterday.

“His current situation is unknown. We have contacted his family and lawyer and legal formalities are being processed,” according to a handwritten statement posted to Hua’s Twitter account and signed by artists Ji Feng and Guo Zhenming.

In the weeks before he disappeared, Hua uploaded dozens of videos on YouTube and Chinese social media platform WeChat documenting the destruction of migrant neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Beijing.

Since setting up a YouTube account only two weeks ago, his videos have been viewed tens of thousands of times and some have been translated by others into English.

Hua was taken from a friend’s home in the northern city of Tianjin in the early hours of Saturday after fleeing Beijing to evade police, other friends told AFP.

“Police grabbed him. Didn’t you know? Nobody is able to contact him,” one of them said on condition of anonymity.

The Tianjin public security bureau could not be reached for comment.

Hua’s videos, usually shot with a selfie stick, brought viewers into recently demolished migrant neighbourhoods and recorded his conversations with displaced low-income workers.

In one he walks between heaps of rubble, gesturing around him and saying, ‘ The sky is very blue today. But look at what’s behind me, all ruined in an instant’.

On Friday night Hua posted several videos on his Twitter account entitled, ‘ They’re here’. — AFP