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The only
monument in China
commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre was at the University of Hong Kong (HKU).
It was an eight meter statue designed by a Danish sculptor named
Jens Galschiot.
The work, erected in 1997, when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule, featured 50 anguished faces and tortured bodies piled on top of each other, reminding of demonstrators calling for democracy killed by Chinese soldiers in iconic Tiananmen Square.
The
Pillar of Shame,
as the play was called, was an orange-brown memory of one of the darkest episodes in recent Chinese history.
It had remained intact in the collective blur of the bloody crackdown orchestrated by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Up to now.
Hong Kong is no longer that rare warning of freedoms within Chinese territory. Last year, a tough national security law began to uproot part of the principles of semi-autonomy that prevailed in the former colony. And the pillar that commemorated the Tiananmen victims was not going to survive the authoritarian turn in the former colony.
On Thursday night, Hong Kong operatives removed the work from the university, despite
objections from its Danish creator
and protests from hundreds of pro-democracy activists.
Already in October the university announced that the pillar would be withdrawn.
The sculptor Galschiot offered to take him back to Denmark, provided he was given legal immunity from prosecution under Hong Kong's national security law.
The local authorities never responded to his request.
"The decision on the aged statue was based on external legal advice and risk assessment in the best interests of the University," the HKU said in a statement, further citing the colonial-era crime ordinance to justify its removal.
The Pillar of Shame was originally erected in Victoria Park, where an annual vigil commemorating the victims of Tiananmen has been held every June 4.
On each anniversary, the student unions also paid their particular tribute by washing the statue.
Hong Kong authorities have banned candlelight vigils in Victoria Park for two years.
At the 2020 vigil, 24 people were arrested for breaking the ban and breaking the barricades set up by the police at the entrance to the compound.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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