The Hong Kong National Security Department confiscated the Pillar of Shame, a statue commemorating the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, from an exhibition center at the University of Hong Kong on Friday.
Police forces on Friday searched an exhibition at the University’s Kadoorie center in Hong Kong’s Yuen Long district and confiscated the statue, claiming it incites »subversion,» according to the South China Morning Post.
The statue, by Danish artist Jens Galschiot, is around eight meters tall and shows a series of faces and bodies stacked on top of each other. It was already dismantled in December 2021 after having been at the University of Hong Kong since 1997 and stored in a cargo container on university grounds.
Specifically, Hong Kong authorities argued at the time that the statue posed »legal risks to the University based on the Crimes Ordinance enacted under the Hong Kong Government».
The brutal suppression of the student and worker protests that took place in Tiananmen Square between April and June 1989 remains a taboo subject in China and especially in Hong Kong, where the so-called National Security Law »prohibits acts of subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.»
The United Nations has previously criticized such legislation as being »misused» to »repress the exercise of fundamental rights» protected by international law, such as freedom of expression and opinion, freedom of peaceful assembly and the right to participate in public affairs.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
