Despite the forced Removal of The Pillar of Shame at HKU, the memoricidey of June Fourth Massacre and the on-going deterioration of democracy and human rights in Hong Kong, the Art voices out loud to the public “STAND TALL & STAY STRONG”
In response to the call by Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt, the creator of The Pillar of Shame, to help spread his art all over the world, the 3D printed model of the Pillar will be exhibited in Manchester’s public space on 11th Dec, 2021. We would like to invite you to witness this historical testimony. Sign the petition
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/601971 Join the letter campaign TG https://t.me/+iqUbmPN_If82Zjk1 Facebook Live https://fb.watch/9Uzhdn9Wey/ https://www.facebook.com/Hkersconnection/ https://www.facebook.com/Hkersoverseas-104539225413622/ Hong Kong Spirits TG https://t.me/+Iyt3nu0blXswZTFl Website https://hkspirits.weebly.com/ [email protected] |
Commemoration of the 73th Anniversary
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
by Shao Jiang
7th December 2021
Shao Jiang, a former prisoner of conscience for his active role in the 1989 pro-democracy movement and survivor of 1989 Tiananmen massacre, who lives and works in exile in London.
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/shao-jiang
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/shao-jiang
As we mark 73 years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covid-19 pandemic has been going on around the world for two years and killed 5.3 million people so far. The Covid-19 epidemic originated in Wuhan, where Dr Li Wenliang was reprimanded by the police for warning about the deadly coronavirus outbreak. Li Wenliang died after he was infected by the virus while treating patients. The Chinese authorities have also suppressed reporting on the outbreak: citizen journalist Fang Bin is still missing; another citizen journalist Zhang Zhan has been sentenced to four years in prison, where she has been on hunger strike and is currently in critical condition, and authorities have repeatedly rejected her application for medical parole. The above cases are only the tip of the iceberg of human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In the Uyghur region, the Chinese state is imposing brutal repression and committing atrocities. Uyghur Tribunal and independent legal analyses have found that these amount to crimes against humanity and genocide. Up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim-majority peoples have been interned in concentration camps, along with nearly one million children taken from their families and interned in supposed ‘boarding schools’. Over half a million are subject to forced labour from which both Chinese and Western companies profit. State policies targeting Uyghur women, including mass forced contraception and sterilisation, have caused the sharpest drop in births anywhere in the world since 1950. These atrocities, along with forced cultural and linguistic assimilation, are a calculated attempt to destroy the Uyghur nation.
Forced Sinicization is also taking place in other so-called autonomous regions under Xi Jinping’s ‘cultural nationalist’ policies. Southern Mongolians are being deprived of the right to learn in their mother tongue as the Chinese language is made the medium of instruction in schools. This has led to large-scale public protests and subsequent crackdown. In addition to the cultural genocide, Tibetans are facing a campaign of heavy repression leading Freedom House to list Tibet as the second least-free place in the world, alongside Syria, in its annual ranking on political rights and civil liberties. Long-term plundering of Tibetan land and mineral resources has caused large-scale environmental damage on the Tibetan Plateau, affecting hundreds of millions of people in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the People’s Republic of China.
At least tens of thousands of prisoners of conscience are currently being held in prisons under the CCP rule. Human rights defenders from the Democracy Wall era and since the 1989 democracy movement have served long-term sentences: Qin Yongmin has served 28 years and has seven years left to serve; Hu Shigen and Chen Xi, who are still in prison, have each served more than 20 years of their sentences. Prisoners of conscience who have served long-term sentences are in extremely poor health in prison, including Gulmira Imin, Ilham Tohti, Dondrub, Pema Yeshi and Wang Bingzhang. The Chinese authorities have also imprisoned human rights defender Zhou Weilin, a disabled worker. Ailing women lawyer Li Yuxuan and ailing feminist Li Qiaochu are being held in detention centres without bail. Dozens of prisoners of conscience have died in prison in recent years, including Cao Shunli, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, Liu Xiaobo, Yang Tongyan and Kunchok Jinpa; 18 religious figures have died in prisons or concentration camps in the Uighur region.
The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us a lesson: the CCP’s crackdown on human rights and its obstruction of the work of human rights defenders are harming the world, we are all connected. No one is free until everyone is free. The rights to freedom of assembly and protest that we have enjoyed in the UK will remain a privilege until people in other parts of the world can all enjoy the same rights, and here too we must fight against increasing limitations on these rights. Liberty and equality are intertwined. Resistance to authoritarianism is closely connected to the struggle for national self-determination,the struggle for and the development of democracy Emancipation can only be achieved by forming solidarity with oppressed peoples all over the world.
.
In the Uyghur region, the Chinese state is imposing brutal repression and committing atrocities. Uyghur Tribunal and independent legal analyses have found that these amount to crimes against humanity and genocide. Up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim-majority peoples have been interned in concentration camps, along with nearly one million children taken from their families and interned in supposed ‘boarding schools’. Over half a million are subject to forced labour from which both Chinese and Western companies profit. State policies targeting Uyghur women, including mass forced contraception and sterilisation, have caused the sharpest drop in births anywhere in the world since 1950. These atrocities, along with forced cultural and linguistic assimilation, are a calculated attempt to destroy the Uyghur nation.
Forced Sinicization is also taking place in other so-called autonomous regions under Xi Jinping’s ‘cultural nationalist’ policies. Southern Mongolians are being deprived of the right to learn in their mother tongue as the Chinese language is made the medium of instruction in schools. This has led to large-scale public protests and subsequent crackdown. In addition to the cultural genocide, Tibetans are facing a campaign of heavy repression leading Freedom House to list Tibet as the second least-free place in the world, alongside Syria, in its annual ranking on political rights and civil liberties. Long-term plundering of Tibetan land and mineral resources has caused large-scale environmental damage on the Tibetan Plateau, affecting hundreds of millions of people in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the People’s Republic of China.
At least tens of thousands of prisoners of conscience are currently being held in prisons under the CCP rule. Human rights defenders from the Democracy Wall era and since the 1989 democracy movement have served long-term sentences: Qin Yongmin has served 28 years and has seven years left to serve; Hu Shigen and Chen Xi, who are still in prison, have each served more than 20 years of their sentences. Prisoners of conscience who have served long-term sentences are in extremely poor health in prison, including Gulmira Imin, Ilham Tohti, Dondrub, Pema Yeshi and Wang Bingzhang. The Chinese authorities have also imprisoned human rights defender Zhou Weilin, a disabled worker. Ailing women lawyer Li Yuxuan and ailing feminist Li Qiaochu are being held in detention centres without bail. Dozens of prisoners of conscience have died in prison in recent years, including Cao Shunli, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, Liu Xiaobo, Yang Tongyan and Kunchok Jinpa; 18 religious figures have died in prisons or concentration camps in the Uighur region.
The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us a lesson: the CCP’s crackdown on human rights and its obstruction of the work of human rights defenders are harming the world, we are all connected. No one is free until everyone is free. The rights to freedom of assembly and protest that we have enjoyed in the UK will remain a privilege until people in other parts of the world can all enjoy the same rights, and here too we must fight against increasing limitations on these rights. Liberty and equality are intertwined. Resistance to authoritarianism is closely connected to the struggle for national self-determination,the struggle for and the development of democracy Emancipation can only be achieved by forming solidarity with oppressed peoples all over the world.
.
We urge the HK Government to release all
political prisoners & safeguard HK's Human Right
political prisoners & safeguard HK's Human Right
December 10th is International Human Rights Day. This year, Hong Kong has suffered severe crackdown of human rights. Many significant symbols of Hong Kong freedom were dismantled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The chancellor of Hong Kong University recently ordered the removal of The Pillar of Shame, a sculpture donated to Hong Kong by Danish artist Jens Galschiøt and erected in Hong Kong University before the to the handover of Hong Kong, to commemorates the Tiananmen Square Massacre, otherwise, the artwork will be disposed like refuse.
We all witnessed how hard the CCP tried to blench out the history of its tyranny. 2020 was the first year when people in Hong Kong were banned from a public memorial for the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Indeed, many Hongkongers who had advocate justice for the victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre are now under accusation. Committee members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (HK Alliance)are facing serious accusation, related to the organisation of the alliance and assembles for June 4th vigil, and offences against the “National Security Law”, which was imposed to Hong Kong by the National People’s Committee without any local legislative process.
Many Hongkongers in the UK are feeling grateful to the British’s warm welcome. However, we cannot neglect those within Hong Kong who are still suffering from the brutal tyranny.
We hereby to urge:
We all witnessed how hard the CCP tried to blench out the history of its tyranny. 2020 was the first year when people in Hong Kong were banned from a public memorial for the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Indeed, many Hongkongers who had advocate justice for the victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre are now under accusation. Committee members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (HK Alliance)are facing serious accusation, related to the organisation of the alliance and assembles for June 4th vigil, and offences against the “National Security Law”, which was imposed to Hong Kong by the National People’s Committee without any local legislative process.
Many Hongkongers in the UK are feeling grateful to the British’s warm welcome. However, we cannot neglect those within Hong Kong who are still suffering from the brutal tyranny.
We hereby to urge:
- The Hong Kong government to release all political prisoners, and to respect Hong Kong’s promised freedom and democracy
- To urge the Chinese Communist government to stop oppressing Hongkongers’ human rights, to stop spreading fears, to stop suppressing dissidents, and to stop interfering the freedom of press in Hong Kong.
-
- To nominate British citizen Jimmy Lai for Nobel Peace Prize, in order to honour Jimmy Lai’s footlong achievements to advocate the value of democracy and freedom, especially the freedom of press.
The Pillar of Shame
|
The Pillar of Shame
The eight-metre tall Pillar of Shame statue connects a Danish artist, China and Hong Kong with the commemoration of 1989 Tiananmen Massacre victims. It also reflects the development – or perhaps the deterioration – of democracy and human rights in Hong Kong.
“The old cannot kill the young forever,” is engraved on the base of the pillar – above it, a towering entanglement of human suffering cast in bronze, copper and concrete. Its Chinese name, meaning “Pillar of Remembrance” or “Pillar of National Grief,” was translated by the late pro-democracy politician Szeto Wah, who formed the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China in May 1989 before the June 4 massacre.
In 1989, students-led demonstrations were held in Tiananmen Square,Beijing . They voiced out for political reformation of the Chinese Communist Party , and asked for a more democratic government. The peaceful protests started on April 15 and were forcibly suppressed on June 4 when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing.
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.
The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement or the Tiananmen Square Incident .UK Foreign Office files declassified last year revealed how a member of the Chinese State Council suggested that at least 10,000 civilians were killed, though estimates of the death toll vary.
The pre-mentioned pillar, created by Danish artist Jens Galschiøt in 1996, was moved to the University of Hong Kong campus by students in 1997 right after being exhibited at the annual candlelight vigil in Victoria Park. Former lawmaker Albert Ho, now chair of the Alliance, recalled why they decided that the statue must be transported to Hong Kong before the 1997 Handover to China.
“We fought for the statue to be shipped to Hong Kong when it was still under British rule. At that time, we had good reason to believe that this statue would not be allowed to enter after the transition,” Ho said.
The pillar was then exhibited at several universities, before the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Polytechnic University erected their own Goddess of Democracy statues years later – tributes to the one erected by the Tiananmen students. In 1998, HKU’s student union hosted a referendum which gave a mandate for the pillar to remain permanently at the school.
However, the pillar did not disappear from the headlines. In 2008, the Alliance painted the statue orange in support of Galschiøt’s “The Color Orange” campaign, which aimed at highlighting China’s human rights violations, on the occasion of the Beijing Olympics Games.
The colour, according to the artist, was a mixture of red, representing the dictatorship of China, and yellow, representing freedom and human rights.
But now, the Pillar of Shame sculpture is set to be removed from its place in Hong Kong University. Luckily,it won't be gone forever. A group of artists are working to create a digital 3D archive of the piece, which is a memorial to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. They say the sculpture is one of the city's last symbols of democracy and freedom of speech. Even things are getting worse and worse everyday , Hong Kongers are still striving heart to protect and preserve their core values.
(Source from HKFP)
The eight-metre tall Pillar of Shame statue connects a Danish artist, China and Hong Kong with the commemoration of 1989 Tiananmen Massacre victims. It also reflects the development – or perhaps the deterioration – of democracy and human rights in Hong Kong.
“The old cannot kill the young forever,” is engraved on the base of the pillar – above it, a towering entanglement of human suffering cast in bronze, copper and concrete. Its Chinese name, meaning “Pillar of Remembrance” or “Pillar of National Grief,” was translated by the late pro-democracy politician Szeto Wah, who formed the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China in May 1989 before the June 4 massacre.
In 1989, students-led demonstrations were held in Tiananmen Square,Beijing . They voiced out for political reformation of the Chinese Communist Party , and asked for a more democratic government. The peaceful protests started on April 15 and were forcibly suppressed on June 4 when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing.
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.
The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement or the Tiananmen Square Incident .UK Foreign Office files declassified last year revealed how a member of the Chinese State Council suggested that at least 10,000 civilians were killed, though estimates of the death toll vary.
The pre-mentioned pillar, created by Danish artist Jens Galschiøt in 1996, was moved to the University of Hong Kong campus by students in 1997 right after being exhibited at the annual candlelight vigil in Victoria Park. Former lawmaker Albert Ho, now chair of the Alliance, recalled why they decided that the statue must be transported to Hong Kong before the 1997 Handover to China.
“We fought for the statue to be shipped to Hong Kong when it was still under British rule. At that time, we had good reason to believe that this statue would not be allowed to enter after the transition,” Ho said.
The pillar was then exhibited at several universities, before the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Polytechnic University erected their own Goddess of Democracy statues years later – tributes to the one erected by the Tiananmen students. In 1998, HKU’s student union hosted a referendum which gave a mandate for the pillar to remain permanently at the school.
However, the pillar did not disappear from the headlines. In 2008, the Alliance painted the statue orange in support of Galschiøt’s “The Color Orange” campaign, which aimed at highlighting China’s human rights violations, on the occasion of the Beijing Olympics Games.
The colour, according to the artist, was a mixture of red, representing the dictatorship of China, and yellow, representing freedom and human rights.
But now, the Pillar of Shame sculpture is set to be removed from its place in Hong Kong University. Luckily,it won't be gone forever. A group of artists are working to create a digital 3D archive of the piece, which is a memorial to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. They say the sculpture is one of the city's last symbols of democracy and freedom of speech. Even things are getting worse and worse everyday , Hong Kongers are still striving heart to protect and preserve their core values.
(Source from HKFP)
Exhibition
Event Album
|
|