Hong Kong police seize Tiananmen crackdown statue, say it's an attempt to incite subversion
May 07, 2023
Hong Kong, May 7 : Hong Kong police seized an exhibit on Friday in connection with what they said was an attempt to incite subversion, with media reporting it was the 'Pillar of Shame', a statue commemorating Beijing's Tiananmen Square crackdown on democracy protesters in 1989, reported Voice of America (VOA).
"The National Security Department ... conducted searches with a warrant this morning. An exhibit related to an 'incitement to subversion' case was seized," police said in a statement.
They did not say who was suspected of wanting to use the statue, which was being kept in storage, to incite subversion.
Multiple Hong Kong media outlets, including TVB, Now News and Ming Pao, reported that the seized evidence was the Tiananmen Crackdown monument, which stood at the University of Hong Kong campus for 24 years.
The exhibit was the "Pillar of Shame," an 8-meter-tall statue depicting dozens of torn and twisted bodies that commemorate protesters killed in the crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square more than three decades ago, reported VOA.
The two-tonne copper Pillar of Shame was first exhibited at a Tiananmen Square commemoration in Hong Kong in 1997, the same year Britain handed the city back to China.
In 2021, the University of Hong Kong dismantled and removed the statute "based on external legal advice and risk assessment for the best interest of the university". It had since been kept in a cargo container on university-owned land, reported Vision Times.
The seizure comes weeks ahead of the June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Hong Kong had traditionally held the largest annual vigils in the world to commemorate the crackdown. The crackdown is taboo in the rest of China and Hong Kong's vigil, traditionally in a city park, was banned beginning in 2020, ostensibly because of coronavirus restrictions.
