A monument commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing has been removed in Hong Kong. Barriers were first erected around the eight-meter-high statue at the University of Hong Kong. Then bystanders heard drilling and hammering noises and the statue was packed and towed away.
Titled ‘Pillar of Shame’, the statue consists of fifty tortured bodies and tormented faces stacked on top of each other. The Danish artist Jens Galschiot made this in 1997 to commemorate the dead students on Tiananmen Square. Estimates of the number of deaths range from a few hundred to many thousands.
According to the university, permission has never been given to put the statue on campus and the board has the right to remove it. The university says it has heard that leaving the statue could lead to legal problems.
The memorial was supposed to go to storage, but Galschiot fears it will be destroyed. He tries to get the statue back to Denmark, but has so far been unsuccessful.
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