{"id":1146606,"date":"2021-12-23T13:49:19","date_gmt":"2021-12-23T18:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1146606"},"modified":"2021-12-23T13:49:22","modified_gmt":"2021-12-23T18:49:22","slug":"china-disappears-tiananmen-square-memorial-in-hong-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/china-disappears-tiananmen-square-memorial-in-hong-kong\/","title":{"rendered":"China Disappears Tiananmen Square Memorial in Hong Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fchina-disappears-tiananmen-square-memorial-in-hong-kong%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1146606&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/GettyImages-1346766773-640x335-1.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p class=\"subheading\"><span>Chinese officials tore down the \u201cPillar of Shame,\u201d a 26-foot-tall statue of brutalized bodies commemorating the 1989 massacre of Tiananmen Square protesters by the Chinese Communist government, on Thursday over the objections of its creator. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The statue has been on display for over 20 years, first at Hong Kong\u2019s Victoria Park and later at the University of Hong Kong.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<p><span>The brutal Chinese government has been attempting to erase the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/asia\/2019\/06\/02\/gedrich-tiananmen-square-30-years-later-what-i-saw-and-what-happened-afterwards\/\"><span>Tiananmen Square massacre<\/span><\/a><span> from history ever since it occurred. Discussion of the event is forbidden everywhere in China except Hong Kong and Macau, which were foreign colonial possessions handed over to China in exchange for promises to respect their autonomy and superior civil rights.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Beijing is ruthlessly breaking those promises of autonomy, especially in Hong Kong, where a flourishing pro-democracy movement was crushed with a totalitarian \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/news\/hong-kong-to-create-more-national-security-offences-official\/\"><span>national security law<\/span><\/a><span>\u201d in 2020.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Before the national security law was imposed on Hong Kong in a flagrant violation of China\u2019s autonomy agreement with the United Kingdom, Hong Kong hosted the largest commemorations of the Tiananmen massacre on Chinese soil, including a massive annual candlelight vigil in Victoria Park.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p><span>Under the new \u201csecurity\u201d regime, Beijing-controlled Hong Kong officials spent the past two years methodically eradicating Tiananmen commemorations. The group that sponsored the annual candlelight vigil <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/asia\/2021\/09\/27\/hong-kong-tiananmen-vigil-group-disbands-citing-chinese-pressure\/\"><span>disbanded<\/span><\/a><span> under intense pressure in September 2021. The vigil itself was <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/national-security\/2021\/05\/27\/hong-kong-officially-bans-tiananmen-massacre-vigil-second-year\/\"><span>banned<\/span><\/a><span>, originally using the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic as an excuse. Veteran activists who defied the ban to observe the Tiananmen anniversary were <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/national-security\/2021\/05\/31\/hong-kong-police-arrest-veteran-activist-grandma-wong-for-honoring-tiananmen-victims\/\"><span>arrested<\/span><\/a><span>. The Communists even banned Tiananmen <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/national-security\/2021\/06\/04\/china-shuts-down-candle-emojis-june-4-references-for-tiananmen-anniversary\/\"><span>candle emojis<\/span><\/a><span> and a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/asia\/2021\/11\/29\/simpsons-episode-tiananmen-massacre-joke-disappears-disney-hong-kong\/\"><span>\u201cSimpsons\u201d episode<\/span><\/a><span> that referred to the massacre.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Human rights advocates grimly acknowledged it was only a matter of time before the purge reached the Pillar of Shame, a striking and hellish sculpture of fifty mangled corpses intended to preserve the memory of the hundreds murdered in 1989. On Thursday that day arrived, as the statue was dismantled in the dead of night and unceremoniously tossed into a storage container:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Pillar of Shame was left in an outdoor area at the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/HKU?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#HKU<\/a> Kadoorie Agricultural Research Centre \u2013 Shek Kong Centre (Source RTHK) <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/IDuRNs43b3\">pic.twitter.com\/IDuRNs43b3<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Studio Incendo (@studioincendo) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/studioincendo\/status\/1473958076558368769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 23, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span>\u201cWorkers barricaded the monument at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) late on Wednesday night. Drilling sounds and loud clanging could be heard coming from the boarded-up site, which was patrolled by guards,\u201d Al Jazeera News reported.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>HKU administrators said the decision to tear down the venerable statue was \u201cbased on external legal advice and risk assessment for the best interests of the University,\u201d a fairly blunt admission that they feared persecution under the national security law.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p><span>The creator of the statue, Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot, said he was not made aware the work was being removed until he saw it reported on social media Wednesday evening.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Pillar of Shame is getting demolished right now in Hongkong. The sculpture has been covered and is heavyly guarded so that no students can document what is going on. This is happening in the middle of the night in Hongkong. Im shoked. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Thepillarofshame?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Thepillarofshame<\/a>\ud83d\ude22 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/eSDjTWql7y\">pic.twitter.com\/eSDjTWql7y<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Jens Galschi\u00f8t (@Galschiot) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Galschiot\/status\/1473730166136446981?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 22, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span>\u201cWe don\u2019t know exactly what happened, but I fear they destroy it. This is my sculpture, and it is my property,\u201d Galschiot said.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cI\u2019ve asked Hong Kong University to allow me to go and collect it in person, but I received no response. If they destroy my work, I\u2019ll seek compensation and demand the remaining pieces to be returned to Europe,\u201d he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/dec\/22\/hong-kong-memorial-to-tiananmen-victims-may-be-imminently-removed\">told<\/a> the <\/span><span>UK <\/span><i><span>Guardian<\/span><\/i><span> on Thursday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cThis is not about the national security law. This is my private property. It\u2019s the Hong Kong law that says the authorities cannot destroy private properties like this,\u201d the sculptor said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cThis is a sculpture about dead people and [to] remember the dead people in Beijing in \u201989. So when you destroy that in this way then it\u2019s like going to a graveyard and destroying all the gravestones,\u201d Galschiot <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-asia-china-59764029\">told<\/a> the <\/span><span>BBC<\/span><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Galschiot asked his supporters in Hong Kong to \u201cdocument everything that happens with the sculpture\u201d and urged HKU to return it to Denmark intact.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The <\/span><i><span>Guardian <\/span><\/i><span>quoted outraged responses to the removal of the Pillar of Shame from democracy advocates and human rights watchdogs:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span>Samuel Chu, the president of the Campaign for Hong Kong, said: \u201cIts creation in 1997 was a touchstone for freedom in Hong Kong; its destruction in 2021 would be a tombstone for freedom in Hong Kong.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Nathan Law, a former Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker who fled to Britain last year, said the statue would live on in people\u2019s memories. \u201cThe PillarOfShame is removed, while memory lives. We must remember what happened on June 4th, 1989. TiananmenMassacre,\u201d he tweeted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u2026 Maya Wang, a senior researcher on China at Human Rights Watch, said removing the statue \u201csignifies Beijing\u2019s ever-growing intolerance of dissent in Hong Kong\u201d. She added: \u201cThe Chinese government is rewriting history as part of its broader efforts to dismantle a free society, and transform the city into one compliant to the Chinese Communist party.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span>Dr. Ian Chong, an associated professor at National University in Singapore, told the BBC the Pillar of Shame was \u201ca reminder of Hong Kong\u2019s freer past,\u201d and said its removal \u201cappears to be a signal that the Hong Kong and Beijing governments will no longer tolerate public displays of remembrance of the events surrounding 4 June.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chinese officials tore down the \u201cPillar of Shame,\u201d a 26-foot-tall statue of brutalized bodies commemorating the 1989 massacre of Tiananmen Square protesters by the Chinese Communist government, on Thursday over &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1146606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1146606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1146606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1146606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1146606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}