Depicting a heap of contorted bodies and screaming faces, the statue was unveiled Tuesday as part of an exhibition of “forbidden art” that organizers said had been censored or “deemed subversive” by Hong Kong and mainland China.
The exhibition was hosted by Jens Galschiøt, the Danish artist behind the famous sculpture, and Kira Marie Peter-Hansen, a member of the European Parliament (MEP). A further six MEPs, including representatives from each of the parliament’s five largest political coalitions, were listed as co-hosts.
That’s good, however it’s again just symbolism. A real signal would be to begin cutting ties with China on a path to end our economical dependency on them.
Rich people never do anything financially adverse so virtue signaling is the only thing that works for them.
In theory yes, in practice we should then also cut ties with every other nation that committed a massacre or oppressed its population, which… checks notes… would be almost every nation.
Why not Turkey for the Armenian Genocide, why not Australia for the treatment of aboriginal people, why not the USA and Canada for the treatment of indigenous people? Why not Great Britain for conquering half of the planet and enslaving people?
why not cut ties because of the people in power? people in power today are not the ones that made these crimes,
except chinai’m stupidAnd also excepting Israel, Kongo, Russia, UAE, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan and still the USA.
And on a side note Xi Jinping, the man in power today, didn’t do the TS massacre, he came to power in 2012
Most of these sound quite reasonable, if i think about it.
These were just in the front of my mind at that moment and while it would be morally good if we could flip the finger to them, it would be really stupid. Just losing Russian gas already caused an energy crisis and inflation, completely refusing middle eastern oil, Congolese Cobalt, Copper, Silver, Gold, Diamonds, Uranium etc and the general relations with the USA, a close ally and country with the probably biggest military would not just be crisis-inducing, it would be economical and political suicide.
to be fair losing russian gas accelerated the adoption of better energy sourge at record speed, so it’s really was a bad thing?
Nobody is saying you have to be perfect. Obviously every past society has flaws and pockmarks. The point is acknowledging past wrongs and seeking reconciliation and seeking to improve.
Denying atrocities makes atrocities worse, because it means you will repeat the errors.
We’ll see this finally happening when China attacks Taiwan.
That statue could only be better if Winnie Pooh was sitting on top of it
Can we get one for Russia in 1993 during the black october too? Or is that different when tanks roll on people and bombard a building?
Well that was after the fall of the ussr and they want to build the narrative that communism is bad
@BennyHill500, there are no such things as communism or capitalism (or any other systems), there are many different variations of them.
When the initial presence of the military failed to quell the protests [at Tiananmen Square], the Chinese authorities decided to increase their aggression. At 1 a.m. on June 4, Chinese soldiers and police stormed Tiananmen Square, firing live rounds into the crowd.
Although thousands of protesters simply tried to escape, others fought back, stoning the attacking troops and setting fire to military vehicles. Reporters and Western diplomats in Beijing that day estimated that hundreds to thousands of protesters were killed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and as many as 10,000 were arrested.
Emphasis mine.
Well it is, so there is that…
Given the disastrous legacy left behind by the Soviet Union, there is no need to build a narrative. Communism is bad and failed spectacularly at everything it’s meant to achieve.
Guys CBS, BBC and Daily Telegraph went tankie… https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/
https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php
The Chinese government estimates more than 300 fatalities. Western estimates are somewhat higher. Many victims were shot by soldiers on stretches of Changan Jie, the Avenue of Eternal Peace, about a mile west of the square, and in scattered confrontations in other parts of the city, where, it should be added, a few soldiers were beaten or burned to death by angry workers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm
The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and released exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, partly confirm the Chinese government’s account of the early hours of June 4, 1989, which has always insisted that soldiers did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square
Maybe some are interested in that: https://eletees.com/product/tiananmen-square-china-1989-shirt
Is there also a pillar of shame for the genocide Belgians did in Congo?. Europeans love moralizing, but never like to think about their own sins.
What happened in Congo is taught in Belgian schools and widely known in Europe. Belgium was widely derided for it even at the time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casement_Report
Judging by your username, you’re Turkish. Are you taught about the Armenian genocide in school?
Or is that one whataboutism too far?
whataboutism is a healthy response to hypocrites.
Is it?
What about the Armenian genocide? Does it get taught in Turkish schools? Is there a statue?
What about Holodomor? Does that get taught in Russian schools? Is there a statue?
What about the up to 50 million who died as a consequence of the Great Leap Forward? Is there a statue commemorating them?
Building a statue does not let you off the hook from mass murder.
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Still no statue though
Because that’s what’s really important: a statue.
In addition to what @SevenOfWine said, we must note that you can openly discuss Belgian colonial history and atrocities in the public space. You can’t discuss the Tiananmen Square massacre publicly in China, though, and the government in Beijing has been trying to hide this and other historical (and contemporary) atrocities committed by China for a long time now. Younger generations who didn’t live through the events of 1989, for example, might not know what happened.
[Edit typo.]
Yes we did genocide and killed millions of people. But it’s okay because we can openly talk about it. No big deal.
This seems to be the core of your argument. Not very convincing if you ask me.
Chinese censors remove video showing off Tiananmen massacre medal
In the video posted March 18 to the official account of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force on the video-sharing platform Bilibili, a woman clad in a camouflage uniform holds up a medal she said was presented to her father after he was among the troops that entered Beijing in early June 1989 to put down weeks of peaceful, student-led protests in Tiananmen Square.
“My father is a retired soldier," she says, according to subtitles on screenshots published by several media outlets including Taiwan’s Liberty Times newspaper, Radio Taiwan International, and the citizen journalist X account “Mr Li is not your teacher.”
The “Defender of the Capital” honor was handed out to soldiers and other enforcers of martial law in Beijing, which was ordered by late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping on May 20 and defied by protesters and hunger strikers, who remained on Tiananmen Square.
The video soon started to garner comments referencing the killing of civilians by the People’s Liberation Army on the night of June 3-4, 1989.
“You’re bragging about how the People’s Liberation Army killed our compatriots?” said one comment, while another said the medal was fit for a “butcher,” according to screenshots of the now-deleted video.
“A ‘medal of honor’ won for massacring unarmed students on behalf of a dictator,” wrote another.
You can’t compare these things whatsoever. Comparing these events is uneducated and simply stupid. This happened over a century ago, it was a very different time in Belgium and all of Europe. The massacre of Tiananmen Square happened less than 40 years ago. Also, the government in China didn’t change since the 1940s, it’s the exact same party that was in power when Tiananmen Square happened, that is also in power right now, still torturing and killing innocent people.
This sub is basically european propaganda. It’s like watching russian facebook
Oh man, the tankies are out in force today, aren’t they?
Does it have the names of all the soldiers that got horribly lynched by the mob?
What would you think about a person asking for the inclusion of some injured/killed KZ guards in a Holocaust memorial? Just asking because that’s about what we think about you
I think that would be awful. I also think equating a color revolution with the holocaust is fascist apologia.
Lazy attempts at straw man-arguments aside: You answered my question with “Awful”. That’s pretty much the answer, yes. We think you are awful.
Can’t seem to find anyone asking for your take. Thanks for sharing regardless!
Wikipedia says, with six sources,
The vast majority of those killed were civilians, though a small number of soldiers were also killed.
You attempt to make it sound like it was anything but a massive inhuman massacre by an oppressive regime. But it wasn’t.
You want it to have the oppressors and murderers names when it doesn’t even have the victims names?
As a memorial you could have included the soldier deaths in the memorials remembrance too, but you didn’t.
People are still oppressed and silenced today. Not being allowed to remember the victims.
What do you want it to be? A memorial for what? In what way?
So… Your honest stance is that “security personnel” who fired automatic weapons into defenseless, non-violent crowds should be memorialized because a handful of them were killed in the ensuing chaos?
How about this one: If someone is charging you with a machete, you should just stand still so you don’t accidentally hurt them defending yourself? Or are you saying that if you both die, you should both have your pictures and caskets side by side at the memorial service?
Your honest stance is that
No. You missed my point, and the overall spirit of my comment.
Basic guide:
- The oppressed have been killing oppressors? Quite cool actually.
- The oppressors have been doing anything? Not cool.
- The oppressors are killing the oppressed? Absolutely not cool.
You see?
Tiananmen Square: What happened in the protests of 1989?
No-one knows for sure how many people were killed.
At the end of June 1989, the Chinese government said 200 civilians and several dozen security personnel had died.
Other estimates have ranged from hundreds to many thousands.
In 2017, newly released UK documents revealed that a diplomatic cable from then British Ambassador to China, Sir Alan Donald, had said that 10,000 had died.
Discussion of the events that took place in Tiananmen Square is highly sensitive in China.
Posts relating to the massacres are regularly removed from the internet, tightly controlled by the government.
So, for a younger generation who didn’t live through the protests, there is little awareness about what happened.
This place should be filled with monuments of stuff European countries did but yeah, China bad. Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, UK, nothing to see here
The difference is the other countries doesn’t try to bury their dark past and lied about it to their own citizens, all while acting like the government is their savior.
Germany and Italy are filled with monuments regarding their dark past (have never been to France and Spain and only very briefly to Belgium so I can’t judge). I really don’t know what you are talking about.
It’s just the usual clumsy wumao attempt at whataboutism
With regards to Belgium: the colonial museum has been revamped, schools teach what happened in the Belgian Congo, and no one’s going around defending or idealising King Leopold who presided over the worst atrocities. Belgian nationalism barely exists, so that hasn’t been a thing in living memory anyway.
Also, what happened in Congo was widely derided even at the time:
This place should be filled with monuments of stuff European countries did but yeah, China bad. Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, UK, nothing to see here
This is not true, in these and practically all other European countries there are many monuments - unlike in China which has been rewriting its own history. Read more here, here, here … you’ll find more across the web.
[Edit typo.]
wadabout waaaaaaaaaa
Only one of those countries currently still is a dictatorship.
