Ai Weiwei now under investigation over porn

BEIJING - Agence France-Presse

Chinese police are investigating Ai Weiwei on pornography charges, the artist said Friday, in the latest move against the outspoken government critic following his detention and a massive tax bill.

The latest accusations center on old pictures posted online of the activist, who spent 81 days in secret police detention earlier this year and was later accused of evading taxes on a huge scale, posing with naked women.

“Yesterday they took my assistant to the police station. They (police) clearly told him this is an investigation, now, they are doing on me, on pornography,” Ai told AFP by telephone.

Ai said authorities had accused him before of producing pornography, but he had not taken the charge seriously.

“When they detained me, they said ‘this is pornography,’ but I just laughed, I said, ‘do you know what is pornography’?” he said. “Nudity is not pornography.”

The pictures show Ai and four women, all naked, sitting on chairs in the middle of a bare white room.

“Netizens came to take photos with me, so we said, why don’t we take nudity photos, then everybody agreed so we did it and they were put on the Internet, and that’s it, we forget about it,” he said.

The latest development comes after Ai this week began the process of challenging a bill for 15 million yuan ($2.4 million) in alleged back taxes by paying an 8.45 million yuan guarantee to authorities.

The money was raised from supporters who came from far and wide to help him raise cash, some even throwing banknotes folded into paper airplanes over the walls of his courtyard home