'We do not feel safe at all'

Artist who fled to the UK after his show on authoritarian regimes was censored opens up on Chinese state fears

- TARA COBHAM

An artist forced to flee to the UK from Thailand after his exhibition on authoritarian regimes was censored has said he does “not feel safe at all”.

Sai, who is Burmese, said that pieces in his Bangkok show by Tibetan, Uyghur and Hong Kong artists were removed and names of the artists obscured following an alleged pressure campaign by China.

“Constellation of Complicity: Visualising the Global Machinery of Authoritarian Solidarity” opened on 24 July at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC), with the aim of exposing the repression tactics used by authoritarian governments. However, just three days later, Chinese embassy staff are claimed to have visited the BACC, accompanied by Bangkok city officials, and demanded that the exhibition be shut down.

Sai has now opened up about the ordeal after he and his co-curator wife fled, fearing arrest or deportation to Myanmar, where he believed he would be punished by the military-run junta for his activism.

“My wife was really trembling,” Sai, who did not want to share his full name for safety reasons, told The Independent. “We tried to buy the earliest flight possible, [thinking]: ‘We don’t know what this is, or the magnitude, but we'll try to get out of the country for now and solve this while we’re outside.’”

The couple left on a plane bound for the UK, taking off just before midnight on 26 July.