Knocking down sculptures in the dead of night. Democracy dies in Hong Kong

This is part 13 in a series. For the full series, go here.

Late last night a team of workers descended on the “Pillar of Shame”, a sculpture that has stood in the grounds of the University of Hong Kong for 24 years.

They quickly put up structures that hid it from view and tried to stop people from recording what was happening. It was clear the sculpture was being taken down.

The “Pillar of Shame” is a work by Danish artist Jens Galschiøt commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre — a topic, it is becoming abundantly clear, that is being aggressively clamped down on by authorities.

Earlier in the month, prominent media figure Jimmy Lai and seven pro-democracy activists were sentenced to 14 months in jail for their role in a 2020 vigil commemorating the massacre. A museum dedicated to the events in June 1989 was raided in September.

The Hong Kong Alliance, the pro-democracy group that ran the museum and previously organised vigils, decided to disband. Many of its leaders have been arrested or charged with offences under the new national security law. Then in October, the University of Hong Kong ordered that the Pillar of Shame be removed.

As outlined by the Hong Kong Free Press, Galschiøt claimed ownership of the sculpture, had found places around the world happy to take the work, and had offered to bring in a team to carefully remove it. His communications and requests, he claims, were ignored.

But allowing the work to be rehomed would defeat the purpose of the exercise, wouldn’t it? Why give a political sculpture back to the artist who created it, when removing it in the dead of night makes a huge statement all of its own?

All these actions over the past two years — the banned vigils, the museum raid, the arrests, and the targeting of the “Pillar of Shame” — mark a continuing attempt to erase a significant moment in history and crack down on anyone daring to speak up or commemorate it.

Freedom in Hong Kong has rapidly deteriorated over the past two years. In 2020 the controversial national security law was brought in, essentially quashing the public’s ability to protest or voice dissent. Since then, heavy-handed charges have flowed, including one man being sent to jail for six years for chanting protest slogans and posting them online.

Elections for Hong Kong’s Legislative Council were delayed; the pandemic was cited as the reason. Before people had the chance to vote again, huge overhauls were made to the system. New rules meant that being pro-independence essentially ruled you out of the running, leading to mass resignations of pro-democracy politicians.

The resulting “patriots only” election this week had a historically low voter turnout and prompted a joint statement by Five Eyes — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US — articulating their grave concerns about “the wider chilling effect of the national security law” and about the erosion of freedoms overall.

In light of everything else happening around the erasure of the Tiananmen Square massacre — the arrests, the shuttering of a commemorative museum, the banning of vigils — the removal of a sculpture seems almost quaint. But the importance of art — and, more specifically, the control of it – is something Beijing and the CCP are plainly aware of.

In November Hong Kong’s new multibillion-dollar modern art museum, M+, was finally opened. At its unveiling it was made clear that the exhibits had to be in keeping with the national security law. Freedom of expression, for a certain measure of “freedom”. The same month, new film censorship guidelines were brought in, with particular aim at documentaries and Hong Kong-specific content.

The symbolic value of this sculpture being removed from a university — a place that in theory should be a haven for academic freedom, education and freedom of ideas — cannot be overlooked.

It’s not clear what is going to happen to the sculpture — whether it survived being removed and, if so, where it will go. But the timing of its removal — in the week after a joke of an election that was slammed by world leaders — comes across as a chilling declaration: certain parts of history are now off limits, academic freedom is a thing of the past, and for those who don’t go along with the forced narrative, the future looks uncertain and dangerous.