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Artist Says Billboard Companies Banned His Artwork Criticizing China Ahead Of Olympics

Photo by Piero CRUCIATTI / AFP

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Laurel Duggan Social Issues and Culture Reporter
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Chinese-Australian artist Badiucao, whose work is critical of the Chinese Communist Party, claimed that his artwork was banned from all Brisbane, Australia, billboard companies due to pressure from China.

“All Brisbane billboard companies have placed a ban on my art work criticizing the Beijing Winter Olympics,” Badiucao explained on Twitter. “Bishopp Billboards initially agreed before pulling out due to fear of a Chinese cyber attack.”

The artist said a representative from Bishopp Billboard said the company could not host his art because the materials the company buys for billboards all come from China and that offending China would come with “a cyber security” risk.

“Calling my art ‘anti-china’ is extremely ignorant and absurd. This self-censorship in Australia is not acceptable,” Badiucao said. (RELATED: ‘You Have No Choice’: Woman Says She Was Trapped In Australian COVID Quarantine Camp)

Badiucao’s Olympics-themed art leading to the alleged ban features an athlete riding a surveillance camera like a snowboard, an Olympic shooter pointing a shotgun at a blindfolded person on their knees, an athlete ice-skating over a puddle of blood and a curler sliding a coronavirus particle as a stone.

Australia, along with the U.S. and U.K., will exercise a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in response to China’s human rights abuses. Many in the international community have accused China of holding Uyghur Muslims in camps where they face brutal torture and “reeducation” as part of a massive ethnic cleansing project.

Bishopp Billboards did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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