Chinese dissident artist and activist Ai Weiwei was denied entry into Switzerland after landing at Zurich Airport on Monday, February 10, reportedly because of his expired Schengen visa issued by Portugal. Swiss border patrol held Ai in the airport overnight until he was made to travel back on a flight to the United Kingdom on Tuesday morning, February 11, as he documented on his Instagram account.
In a statement to Hyperallergic, Ai noted that he became a permanent resident of Portugal during the COVID-19 pandemic in addition to living and working in the United Kingdom and Germany, and that his visa renewal had been postponed as the Portuguese government has a backlog of some 400,000 pending visa cases. However, the government extended the validity of immigrant documents through June 30 of this year in acknowledgment of the administrative delays and influx of applicants.
“After my lawyer contacted the Portuguese authorities, he provided me with an official letter confirming that this policy is published on Portugal’s official website,” Ai told Hyperallergic in an email.
“According to my lawyer, Switzerland enforces stricter visa regulations compared to other Schengen countries,” he continued. “As a Schengen country, Switzerland should recognize documents validated by any other Schengen member state. With my Portuguese residency, I can freely enter and leave both Portugal and Germany. I don’t understand why the same visa isn’t accepted in Switzerland.”
In his initial Instagram post on the situation, Ai alleged that border patrol told him that “this is Switzerland, not Portugal.” He also shared videos and photos of his time at the airport, including a small room with a bench and a sheet for a bed.
“When the Swiss border police led me into a room, they confiscated both my passport and my Portuguese visa,” Ai told Hyperallergic, noting that the only other time he had experienced this was when he was secretly detained in China. “This time, they did not return my passport and visa until I was about to board the airplane that took me back to the UK.”
The Swiss State Secretary for Migration didn’t immediately respond to Hyperallergic‘s request for comment.
In a statement to Hyperallergic, a representative for the Zurich police said that Ai “only had an expired residence permit for Portugal, but no visa.”
“It is known that the Portuguese authorities extend expired residence permits by letter,” the statement continued. “However, this letter is not mentioned in Annex 22 of the Schengen Manual (list of valid residence permits), which is why he is not allowed to enter the Schengen area outside Portugal.”
Ai said he was visiting Switzerland to visit his friend Uli Sigg, the former Swiss Ambassador to China, adding that he had been to the country more than 20 times “including for my earliest exhibitions, planned exhibitions, and my participation in Art Basel.”
“I am not unfamiliar with Switzerland, and Switzerland is not unfamiliar with me — I did not expect to encounter such a surprising incident,” he expressed. “The country is undoubtedly a serene, temperature-controlled flawless vault of wealth. Its comfort, sense of order, and satisfaction are inseparable from the suppression of life’s aimless, chaotic states, organic growth, mutation and spontaneity. There is no room for humor in this sterilization of humanity’s raw essence, which rejects diversity, randomness, and the alien qualities that make us human.”
Editor’s Note, 2/12/2025, 11:29am EST: This article has been updated with new information about Ai’s resident status and a statement from the Zurich police.
