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Context

• A monument at a Hong Kong university that was the best-known public remembrance of the Tiananmen Square massacre on Chinese soil was removed, wiping out the city’s last place of public commemoration of the bloody 1989 crackdown.

About

• The Tiananmen Square protests, known as the June Fourth Incident in China, were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989.
• Troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military's advance into Tiananmen Square.
• Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousands.
• The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement.
• It was a pivotal moment at which a divided Communist Party leadership decided to suppress the democracy movement rather than allow it to grow.

‘Pillar of Shame’

• There is more than one Pillar of Shame. It is a series of works by Danish sculptor Jens Galschioet, all the same height.
• They have been erected in Hong Kong, Mexico and Brazil, and are designed to remind people of events to ensure they don’t happen again.
• The one in Hong Kong, which marks the Tiananmen crackdown, depicts a mass of torn and twisted bodies in a tall pile.
• Its removal is testament to the ruling Communist Party’s efforts to erase the bloody events of that day from the public consciousness.

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/why-did-hong-kong-remove-a-tiananmen-memorial-7687305/

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