A monument at a Hong Kong university that was the best-known public remembrance of the Tiananmen Square massacre on Chinese soil was removed early Thursday, wiping out the city’s last place of public commemoration of the bloody 1989 crackdown. For some at the University of Hong Kong, the move reflected the erosion of the relative freedoms they have enjoyed compared to mainland China.
The 8-meter (26-foot) -tall Pillar of Shame, which depicts 50 torn and twisted bodies piled on top of each other, was made by Danish sculptor Jens Galschioet to symbolize the lives lost during the military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.”
They are sending a signal to the students that it is over with the (Hong Kong) democracy movement and that it is over with free speech in Hong Kong,” Galschioet said of the monument’s removal.The university said it asked that the sculpture, which had been standing on its campus for more than two decades, be put in storage because it could pose “legal risks.” “No party has ever obtained any approval from the university to display the statue on campus, and the university has the right to take appropriate actions to handle it at any time,” it said in a statement after its removal. Each year on June 4, members of the now-defunct student union would wash the statue to commemorate the massacre. The city, together with Macao, were the only places on Chinese soil where commemorations of the crackdown were allowed.
