The last feudal Emperor, Aisin Gioro.Pu Yi (Henry Pu Yi) would never have expected his sibling to resort to socialist laws to protect his image rights.

Twenty-eight-year-old Aisin Gioro.Pu Yi (Henry Pu Yi), China's last feudal Emperor. [File]

An exhibition, 'China's Last Monarch and His Family' held in 2000, displayed various photos, diaries, abdication scripts, seals and relics of Pu Yi and his royal family, even clothes Pu had worn when he was undergoing reeducation in the Fushun War Criminals Administrative Center, the Xinhua News Agency reported on July 17. It costs five Yuan (US$0.6) per person to visit.

Jin Youzhi (Aisin Gioro.Pu Ren), 88, Henry Pu Yi's half brother, filed a lawsuit against Wang Qingxiang, exhibition planner and a historical researcher and sponsor of the China Friendly Association for Ethnic Unity, for breaching Pu Yi's image rights this March, Xinhua says - the first of its kind involving a feudal Emperor. 

"I visited the exhibition at the Palace Museum in November 2005. Intending to lure visitors and capture profits, it displayed a large number of various photos of Pu Yi without informing me in advance. The planner and sponsor's acts have been in severe violation of Pu Yi's image rights and dealt a great psychological blow to his family," Jin noted in his statement of charges.

"The defendants should stop these rights violation as soon as possible and make public apologies on national media," Jin told Xinhua.

Pu Yi's case raises the issue of people's right to know and image rights protection and increases the necessity to further protect the celebrities' image rights and privacy.

Zhang Siping, a lawyer from Jilin Province, says the exhibition violates the last emperor's image rights and privacy.

"Pu Yi, as a celebrity, his image rights and privacy are restricted because of the public's right to know. But it doesn't mean that everyone is eligible to violate his image rights," Zhang says.

Aisin Gioro.Pu Yi (Henry Pu Yi), China's last feudal Emperor, posed for a photo when he was undergoing reeducation in the Fushun War Criminals Administrative Center. [File]

Superintendent of the Law School of the Jilin Academy of Social Sciences Yu Xiaoguang argues that Wang spent a tremendous amount of effort on the display collection, which makes the collection the fruit of his own research.

"If he isn't holding the exhibition to make a profit, he shouldn't be accused of rights violation," Yu says.

The defendants immediately denied Jin's charges.

"Although the exhibition presents photos, diaries and relics of his family, the display is the fruit of years of my own research," Wang says. He believes it is his right to use these photos.

"I searched for Pu's photos in some archives in the interests of my research, and have paid for copies of the ones the archives gave me," Wang added.

Jin's position is also being questioned by Wang.

According to Wang, Jin was adopted by Emperor Guangxu so he can't be regarded as a sibling of Pu Yi. If this is the case, then he is not eligible to sue him on behalf of Pu Yi.

Wang claims that he is just a planner and isn't implicated in making profits with the sponsor and so that he shouldn't be included in the prosecution.

Pu Yi (Henry Pu) was enthroned as Emperor Xuan Tong at the age of three -- the tenth emperor of the Qing Dynasty and the last emperor of China. Qing was toppled in 1911. 

To contact the reporter on this story:
Guo Qiang in Beijing at guoqiang@chinadaily.com.cn