A Chinese artist was condemned to a fine for the “illegal filming” of folk music in Xinjiang – even if China promotes the performances sponsored by the state of Uighur singers and dancers in Europe who have angry Uighuri activists.
The Chinese artist, Guo Zhenming, who is known for his work commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, told Radio Free Asia that he had been sentenced to a fine of 75,000 yuan (US $ 10,300) and had confiscated all his equipment and equipment on what he said is just a personal project and not a film for distribution.
In one of the videos, there is a Uighur daughter playing a traditional stringed musical instrument known as the Tambur. “This is an evidence used by the cultural and tourist office to accuse me,” Guo told RFA Mandarin.
The Urumqi municipal culture and tourism office in Xinjiang, which held an audience in the case of Guo last week, said that the director and dissident artist based in Yunnan had violated article 13 of the `right of promotion of the film industry ” which requires that” legal persons and other organizations that intend to produce films ” screens with relevant departments to be deposited for their archives.
But Guo told RFA in an interview on Wednesday that his folk music shooting in Xinjiang cities and villages in December 2024 and January 2025 was not intended for commercial use, and he had not scripted a film.
Instead, it is a personal art project with contemporary Chinese musician Wang Xiao to create and collect folk music while traveling and turning the Xinjiang landscape, he said.
“The current Xinjiang shooting is only a record for artistic outings on the ground.
The Urumqi Culture and Tourism office estimated that it was likely to transform the images shot in the Xinjiang into a film because it had previously screened a documentary – which concerned artists haunted by the Tiananmen Square – Massacre in Berlin Film Festival in Germany, even if it had not obtained the official permission to publish this film.
In February, the authorities of Urumqi had made a descent into Guo’s house and entered all its equipment, including two cameras, a hard drive, two filters, a set of lights and a recorder.
Chinese Internet users and artists have criticized the punishment against Guo as a suppression by the government of artistic freedom and “high fishing”, a term used in legal circles to describe the inter-provincial police beyond the jurisdiction of a particular office.
Uighur anger of the performance supported by the State
Guo’s punishment for the filming of folk music in the Xinjiang strongly contrasts with the efforts of the Chinese state to promote the exhibitions of Uighur culture around the world – invariably depriving an image that the oughurs embrace Chinese culture and fortunately live with the Han ethnic majority.
More recently, exiled Uighur activists opposed performances in Paris, France, and Budapest, Hungary, by Muqam Ughur 12, a dance and music troupe under the Xinjiang Performing Arts Bureau.
Social media videos broadcast by the main program of the highly stylized troop of dancers spinning in the context of the Eiffel Tower while passers -by applaud.
“It is a grotesque irony that China presents Uighur culture in Europe while erasing in the Uighur Fatherland,” RFA Rushan Abbas, president of the Uighur World Congress, told RFA.
“The same regime featuring dance shows abroad is the one that criminalized the Uighur religious expression, bulldozer our mosques, prohibits our language and detained our artists. It is not a cultural preservation – it is cultural propaganda. Europe should not be an accomplice in this white campaign to wash in thirty, “she said.
The Chinese communist government is accused of serious human rights violations against the minority Muslim group in Xinjiang, the US government has determined to a genocide.
Anger in cultural circles
It is not clear if the decision of the Chinese authorities to throw the book on Guo is motivated by his reputation as a dissident, or by the fact that he document the Uighur culture that Beijing is accused of erasure.
But the imposition of severe sanctions in Guo has angry those who in the legal and cultural circles of China, who say that this is the first case of this type where the authorities aroused a punishment for an “individual or personal filming conduct” under the law of the promotion of the film industry, since its implementation in 2017.
“The cinematographic law regulates organized film production activities, and not individual filming,” said Li Xiongbing, the lawyer representing Guo, who argued during an audience on April 11 that there were “serious problems in the application of the law” and that the authorities of Urumqi were not the organization of the legal order on this case.
In a letter to the Urumqi Municipal Culture and Tourism Office, the Guo legal team stressed that the office had clearly crossed its administrative authority and recommended that Guo equipment and equipment have returned immediately and that the penalty decision is revoked.
RFA could not immediately reach the Urumqi Municipal Culture and Tourism Office to comment.
Impact on artistic freedom
Chinese Internet users fear that the movement will have broader implications for the creative ecosystem of China, beyond the film and art industry.
“Film has a film in Hunan, and being condemned to a fine by the Xinjiang. It may seem completely ridiculous, but it denies a serious problem: our open space for artistic freedom,” wrote a WeChat blogger named Li Yuchen.
“If this nonsense continues, I fear that the next people punished for` `illegal filmmaker ” are you, and I, and all those we know who have already used a camera or a mobile phone,” added Li.
The Chinese artist He Sanpo, who now lives in Thailand, has echoed a similar feeling, qualifying the sanctions of “absurd” and recalls an order of officials of the city of Sanhe in the province of Hebei, who had ordered that all the walls of the city were painted green during the night.
“They are as absurd as the political jokes of the former Soviet Union. Once the public power prevails over the law, it is like a tiger on the street, which can hurt people at any time and anywhere. Any absurd and terrifying incident could occur,” he told RFA.
In December 2022, the authorities of Dali in the southwest province of Yunnan in China placed Guo within 15 days of administrative detention to “choose quarrels and arouse in trouble”, an accusation frequently used to target peaceful criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party in power, after having made comments on the “White Paper”.
The filming of ethnic minorities within Chinese borders can be deemed sensitive by the authorities.
In 1995, China condemned Tibetan musician Ngawang Chophel to 18 years in prison for having filmed traditional Tibetan songs and folk dance, over a period of two months in Tibet. He was accused of “committing a spy crime” and having used the cover of the filming of Tibetan music to bring together sensitive intelligence and engage in “separatist activities”.
The RFA Ugyhur service has contributed the reports. Translated by Tian Li. Published by Tenzin Pema and Mat Pennington