By Alun John and Edmond Ng
HONG KONG (Reuters) – A leading Hong Kong university has fenced off a statue on its campus that for more than two decades has commemorated pro-democracy protesters killed during China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, Reuters witnesses said.
Late on Wednesday night, security guards at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) fenced off the eight-metre high, two-tonne copper sculpture called the “Pillar of Shame” that commemorates those killed by Chinese authorities more than three decades ago.
The statue is one of the few remaining public memorials in the former British colony to remember the bloody crackdown that is a taboo topic in mainland China, where it cannot be publicly commemorated.
A crane and at least one shipping container was brought into the campus as construction workers milled around the area, according to two Reuters reporters on the scene just after midnight local time. Loud construction noise could be heard, they said.
Local media outlet Citizen News reported the university council had voted to demolish the Pillar of Shame.
Several months ago, the university had sent a legal letter to the custodians of the statue asking for its removal.
Authorities have been clamping down in Hong Kong under a China-imposed national security law that is being used to suppress civil society, jail democracy campaigners and curb basic freedoms including free speech.
The university’s public affairs office gave no immediate response to a Reuters request for comment.
(Additional reporting by Jessie Pang and Eduardo Baptista; Writing by James Pomfret; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
