Status: 12.10.2021 12:16 p.m.
Because it is reminiscent of the Tiananmen massacre, a sculpture is to be removed from the campus of Hong Kong University. Oppositionists worry about artistic freedom. Protest also comes from Denmark.
It has been one of the landmarks of the university campus for 24 years: The “Pillar of Shame”, an eight-meter-high sculpture that stands on the grounds of the University of Hong Kong (HKU). It recalls one of the darkest chapters in Chinese history: the bloody suppression of the democracy movement in June 1989 by the communist leadership in Beijing. The sculpture is made of concrete painted red and shows emaciated bodies and painful faces of suffering people.
During the crackdown on democracy protests in Beijing in early June 1989, Chinese soldiers killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people. To commemorate them, people of all ages and nations have come to the university campus in Hong Kong over and over again in recent years. They laid flowers on the “Pillar of Shame”, paused and symbolically cleaned the huge sculpture.
Symbolic cleansing
The last time there was such a cleaning action was on June 4th of this year, as can be seen on images from the Hong Kong news agency Eyepress. Young women and men dressed in black polish the plaque on the underside of the sculpture.
“’The old cannot kill the young forever,’ it says on the plaque,” explains Danish artist Jens Galschiøt in a television interview. He designed the “Pillar of Shame” in the late 1990s and built it in 1997 in Hong Kong.
If his work of art is dismantled, the artist Jens Galschiøt wants to have the sculpture brought back to Denmark.
Image: picture alliance / dpa
Instruction: sculpture should disappear
Future anniversaries of the Tiananmen massacre will probably no longer see the “Pillar of Shame”, at least not on the Hong Kong University campus. A few days ago, the administration of the renowned university ordered that the sculpture had to disappear – obviously under pressure from the communist government.
The Hong Kong association “Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China”, which has been looking after the memory of the victims of the Tiananmen massacre since the 1990s, was asked to dismantle the work of art by Wednesday afternoon local time at the latest.
Danish artist protests
In archive footage from Danish television, Galschiøt says:
The Tiananmen massacre is to be erased from Chinese history. That is why it is so important to keep the memory.
The 67-year-old artist protests vehemently against the fact that the University of Hong Kong wants to dismantle his memorial sculpture under pressure from the Chinese leadership. In Denmark, opposition politicians called on Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod to appoint the Chinese ambassador in protest.
Hong Kong Prime Minister: No interference
The Hong Kong Prime Minister Carrie Lam, appointed by China’s leadership, stressed that she did not want to interfere in the debate. The matter takes place on the premises of a university. They advise their administration to “regulate the whole thing in accordance with the locally applicable guidelines”.
In Hong Kong, many now expect that the sculpture will not be dismantled immediately after the deadline. But in the medium term it will probably disappear.
Special status includes artistic freedom
The former British colony of Hong Kong has been part of the People’s Republic of China for a good 24 years – as an autonomously governed Special Administrative Region (SAR). Before the city was handed over, Great Britain and China regulated in a legally binding treaty that in Hong Kong – unlike in the rest of China – the rule of law, freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of the arts should apply until 2047. In recent years, China’s state and party leadership has repeatedly broken this agreement, according to political scientists and international lawyers.
Artist Galschiøt at least wants to ensure that the “Pillar of Shame” is not destroyed. If his work of art is dismantled, he will have it brought back to Denmark.
Pro-communist politicians in Hong Kong such as Tam Yiu-Chung justified the ordered dismantling of the sculpture: Everything that endangers China’s “national security” must disappear, said Tam, according to a report in the Hong Kong newspaper “South China Morning Post”.