The Jerusalem Post: Court backs students in TAU row over Falun Gong exhibit the university removed

Oct. 1, 2009

A Tel Aviv District Court judge on Wednesday ruled that Tel Aviv University
had "violated freedom of expression and succumbed to pressure from the
Chinese Embassy" when it took down a student exhibition last year that
focused on the oppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement at the hands
of the Communist Chinese government.

The exhibition, which featured 25 paintings by 17 artists from around the
world, depicted Falun Gong spiritual practices and the torture and
executions its members have reportedly been subjected to in recent years.

The movement, which is based on an ancient Chinese meditation method that
aims to bring its practitioners to higher spiritual enlightenment, was
outlawed in China in 1999. Some of the artists, who are survivors of China's
hard labor camps, had endured the very tortures portrayed in the paintings.

The exhibition was originally approved by the head of the Asian Studies
department at TAU, Prof. Yoav Ariel, along with the university's
administration, which allotted nearly two weeks in March 2008, for the
presenters to show the paintings inside the central on-campus library.

But after just two days, organizers were told that the exhibition had to be
removed. After initially protesting the move, they were given an additional
three days to hold the exhibition, but were then told it had to come down.

The two students who had organized the exhibition, Yaniv Nitzan and Itay
Tamuz, were incensed, and claimed that the decision to shut down the
exhibition had been made after TAU was pressured by the Chinese Embassy in
Tel Aviv, the two took the matter to court.

Nitzan and Tamuz filed the petition against both TAU and the university's
student union, both of whom appear as defendants on the court documents.
According to a student union member close to the case, the pair had been
under the impression that because the student union had refused to take
sides in the matter until a legal ruling was issued, it, too, opposed the
exhibition.

Nonetheless, after more than a year of legal battles, Judge Amiram Benyamini
ruled on Wednesday that TAU had "succumbed to pressure from the Chinese
Embassy, which funds various activities at the university, and took down the
exhibit, violating [the students'] freedom of expression."

Benyamini also stipulated as part of his ruling that the exhibition be given
another week to be shown, and ordered TAU to pay some NIS 45,000 for the
students' court costs.

TAU declined to comment on the matter Wednesday afternoon, and a spokesman
at the Chinese Embassy refused to comment, telling The Jerusalem Post that
it was "a holiday" before hanging up the phone.

The TAU student union, however, which was not affected by the ruling, issued
a response expressing its solidarity with the students, and called on the
university to "encourage pluralism and freedom of expression amongst the
student body."

"As part of this, the student union will assist the organizers in their
efforts to present the exhibition on campus. From the moment that the
university decided to do away with the exhibition, the union waited for the
legal ruling of the court. After receiving the judge's ruling, we are now
standing with the students who initiated the exhibition, and will assist
them in any way they might need to present the exhibition anew."