"A strong signal to China": Model of the "Pillar of Shame," a memorial to the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, was unveiled outside the European Parliament in Brussels
A model of the “Pillar of Shame,” which was controversially removed from a Hong Kong university in 2021, has gone on display in front of the European Parliament in Brussels.
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.
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?
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.
The term "tankie" was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions
Meanwhile, Belgium has several monuments glorifying the colonization of congo but I couldn't find one dedicated to the victims of Léopold II's brutal colonial practices...
Believe it or not, one can think the Tiananmen massacre was bad, and also think colonization was bad.
I'm just not a fan of countries' moral posturing about other countries' exactions while sweeping their own under the rug. And I'm french, so my own country is definitely part of this shitty hypocritical club.
The students at Tianmenn protested for China becoming democratic and gainst China becoming capitalist. So it is quite strongly linked to Western commercial and colonial interests.
China developed just as the West wanted, by adopting capitalist economics without democratic systems or worse democratic ownership of the means of production.
Just that China then outplayed the West at their own game.
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.
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.
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
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.
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:
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.
In Northern Ireland, during the troubles, 28 unarmed civil rights protestors were shot (14 killed) on Bloody Sunday, by the British army. They covered it up then, lying that the soldiers had been shot at and that some of the protestors were armed. That was back in 1972. None of those soldiers faced any charges until 2016. And to this day none have been prosecuted. Similarly there has been no charges levied on anyone that put those soldiers there that day. Even though that same battalion was guilty of killing 11 civilians in the Ballymurphy massacre just seven months beforehand and of brutalizing protestors outside of Magillian Internment camp a week beforehand.
Over 50 years later and there are still British MPs that fight bitterly against any British soldiers facing any prosecution for crimes they committed in Northern Ireland against British Citizens.
The Tienanmen square massacre was way worse, no doubt. But don't fool yourself into thinking that any country, especially those that colonized large swaths of the planet, have a clear conscience.
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.
Isn’t Germany filled with monuments to their sins? And not mild ones, like the kind intended to make people stop and think about the people who had everyday lives snuffed out by their neighbors.
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.
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.
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.
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