Unbolted. The “Pillar of Shame”, a statue honoring victims of the Tiananmen crackdown, was removed Thursday, December 23, at the University of Hong Kong. “The decision regarding the old statue was made on the basis of external legal advice and a risk assessment for the best interests of the university.”, she said in a statement.
Since 1997, year of the installation of this 8 m high sculpture representing a tangle of 50 bodies distorted by pain, thehe students at the University of Hong Kong were cleaning it to honor the victims of the Chinese repression. Hong Kong has long been the only place in China where the commemoration of the Tiananmen events was tolerated.
With the authoritarian takeover of Beijing on the former British colony, through the draconian law on national security, the city is losing one of the symbols of the freedom it enjoyed before 2020. LThe “Pillar of Shame” will be stored elsewhere, according to the university. In her press release, she ensures that no one had obtained formal authorization to exhibit this statue.
This withdrawal provoked strong reactions among exiled pro-democracy activists. Nathan Law, a former elected pro-democracy refugee in the United Kingdom, assured that the statue will continue to live in people’s memory. “The ‘Pillar of Shame’ has been removed, but the memory survives. We must remember what happened on June 4, 1989”, he wrote on Twitter.
Tea #PillarOfShame is removed, while memory lives.
We must remember what happened on June 4th, 1989.#TiananmenMassacre https://t.co/sh4bAfVB4q– Nathan Law 羅冠聰 (@nathanlawkc) December 23, 2021
“Shame on the University of Hong Kong for destroying the history and collective memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre. You should be condemned to the pillar of shame.”, launched Brian Leung, pro-democracy activist exiled in the United States, also on Twitter.
The author of the work, the Dane Jens Galschiot found “strange” and “shocking” that the university attack the sculpture, which, according to him, remains private property. “This sculpture is really expensive. So if they destroy it, then of course we’re going to go after them.”, he added, “it is not fair”.