Political Prisoner

I was reading about Ai Weiwei and found him an example of political prisoner.

I first heard about him when he had his Sunflower Seeds installed at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, London last year. "The work consists of one hundred million porcelain "seeds," each individually hand-painted in the town ofJingdezhen by 1,600 Chinese artisans, and scattered over a large area of the exhibition hall.^[31] The artist was keen for visitors to walk across and roll in the work to experience and contemplate the essence of his comment on mass consumption, Chinese industry, famine and collective work."

Recently I heard from TED and other sources that because of the anti-country art works and his activist protest against the government, first surveillance cameras were installed outside his studio, then he got beaten up by the police, detained from leaving the country, imprisoned, and his studio was destroyed by the Chinese government.

I love his work as an artist and really appreciate his courage to stand up against the authority regardless of the threats to his life. I recommend you to watch the video below if you're interested in his story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vX8OM7f9sE

A brief biography of Ai Weiwei from Wiki:

Ai Weiwei (pinyin: Ài Wèiwèi; born 28 August 1957) is a Chinese artist and activist, who is also active in architecture, curating, photography, film, and social and cultural criticism.^[1][2] Ai collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuronas the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics.^[3] In addition to showing his art he has investigated government corruption and cover-ups. He was particularly focused at exposing an alleged corruption scandal in the construction of Sichuan schools that collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. He intensively uses the internet to communicate with people all over China, especially the young generation.^[4] On 3 April 2011 police detained him at Beijing airport, and his studio in the capital was sealed off in an apparent crackdown by the Chinese authorities on political dissidents.