Two universities in Hong Kong on Friday removed images honoring the dead in Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. A day earlier, the oldest university in Hong Kong already decided to remove such a monument.
The more than six meters high statue ‘Goddess of Democracy’ had disappeared from a square in front of the Chinese University in the city on Friday morning. In a statement, the educational institution said the “unauthorized statue” should be removed. Local media report that a statue also disappeared in front of Lingnan University in Hong Kong. That would have happened for “security reasons”.
On Thursday, the ‘Pillar of Shame’ monument, made up of fifty tormented faces and tortured bodies stacked on top of each other, was removed by the oldest university in the city. That eight-meter-high statue had been there since 1997, but had to disappear after a “risk analysis” and for “legal reasons”. Government critics fear the authorities are trying to erase the city’s collective memory.
The 1989 Beijing protest in Tiananmen Square, also known as Tiananmen Square, may have claimed the lives of thousands. The protest against the communist government was brutally ended by the army.
Every year in Hong Kong, the victims are remembered. Recently, however, pro-democracy activists, including Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, 74, were sentenced to months in prison for participating in an “illegal” Tiananmen commemoration.
Unlike in mainland China, the Tiananmen protest in Hong Kong could until recently be commemorated. This is because the former British Crown Colony has been a semi-autonomous region of China since 1997 with its own mini-constitution. However, the influence of the central government has limited democratic freedoms in Hong Kong and crushed the pro-democracy movement.
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