The University of Hong Kong has had a sculpture in memory of the victims of the bloody suppression of the democracy movement in China in 1989 removed from its campus.
The eight-meter-high “Pillar of Shame” by Danish artist Jens Galschiøt was dismantled and taken away on Thursday night.
The removal of the memorial sparked sharp criticism from members of the democracy movement in the Chinese Special Administrative Region and also gave the artist a bad feeling.
"We have done everything we can to tell the University of Hong Kong that we would like to pick up the sculpture and bring it to Denmark," said Galschiøt of the German Press Agency in Copenhagen.
He regards the work of art as his own.
From his point of view, it was only a loan to the Hong Kong Alliance to support the democratic movements in China, which had to be dissolved under the pressure of the new "security law".
Opposition under pressure
When the Chinese government enforced the controversial law in Hong Kong a year and a half ago, the opposition movement in the seven million metropolis was practically eliminated. The vague wording of the law facilitates action against activities that China sees as subversive, separatist, terrorist or conspiratorial - and thus targets critics of the Hong Kong government and the Chinese leadership.
Beijing has long been a thorn in the side of the work of art for the 1989 massacre victims on the university campus, as any memory of the military operation against the Tian'anmen movement in the People's Republic is to be deliberately erased.
The university justified the removal with "legal risks".
Concerns about security threats from the "fragile statue" were also expressed, as reported by the radio station RTHK.