In the latest shock to academic liberties, as China cracks down, Hong Kong’s oldest university began an overnight operation on Thursday to demolish a statue honoring those killed in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
A statue commemorating pro-democracy protesters who died during China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 has been disassembled and removed from a prominent Hong Kong university’s campus site after more than two decades.
The artwork, which depicts agonized human torsos, is one of the few remaining public memorials in the former British colony to commemorate the violent crackdown, which is a taboo subject in mainland China and cannot be openly honored.
The “Pillar of Shame,” as it was known, was a prominent emblem of Hong Kong’s broad range of freedoms promised when it returned to Chinese authority in 1997.
In an early Thursday statement, the Council of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) stated it decided to delete the statue during a Wednesday meeting “based on external legal advice and risk assessment for the best benefit of the University.” “The HKU Council has requested that the statue be stored, and that the University continue to seek legal opinion on any suitable follow-up action,” the statement read.
