"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 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.
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?
There's a bit of a difference between the likes of Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, etc, who committed atrocities primarily in the days of colonialsm and have since drastically changed — they've acknowledged what they've done, and to my knowledge apologised for it — and China.
China hasn't become less authoritarian since the massacre, doesn't acknowledge it even happened, and certainly hasn't apologised. The sad truth is, they'd likely do it all over again. Because they're just as bad now as they were then.
I hate the "but whatabout..." whenever someone calls out China on murdering their civilians and even committing an ongoing genocide.
If you actually think China and nations such as Britain, Canada, France, Spain, Germany, etc are the same, you frankly need to get your head examined.
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.
Inflation is bad enough as it is.
Unless you're a shareholder or executive like the Arnault family pushing for protectionism in France, we will just be even poorer.
Oh man, the tankies are out in force today, aren’t they?
LoL.. I have a relatively limited Blocklist of tankies and therefore do not see any of their drivel anymore. Seriously, just block the names you recognize.. at 20 your Lemmy experience will be much more sane.
The instance I'm on is (was?) federated with hexbear. As soon as instance blocking was added as a feature I blocked hexbear and lemmygrad. It was a drastic improvement.
Sorry for my ignorance, but what are 'tankies'?
Far-left authoritarians. In this case, CCP supporters/apologists
From Wikipedia:
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
Authoritarians who typically take an anti-western stance and champion Russia and China.
If China didn't censor everything to do with something that totally didn't happen I'm sure they'd be very upset.
What about banning imports from any company that is using forced labour?
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...
Virtue signaling from Europe while still supporting israel's Genocide and even inviting them to Eurovision.
Shamelessness knows no bounds.
There can be multiple different people and multiple different motivations within people that do not all need to agree with each other. One person/thought can be good, while others aren't.
That discrepancy alone doesn't discredit the good things, unless they're directly related. In this case, they aren't. Israel's genocide needs to be condemned, but so need to be the events from Tiananmen square.
I hate arguments like yours. It's always like, "you either be perfect or you're the worst scum on Earth". Completely counterproductive. Yes, criticize the bad parts. But don't paint the good things, like this, as bad, it's just unnecessary.
Especially, an art installation at one place has absolutely nothing to do with who decides who goes to a stupid song contest. Wtf.
No supporting Genocide while criticizing others just makes you a giant hypocrite. Europe is not helping do something they are criticizing others
We have no moral high ground to stand on to criticize others anymore. Every single time China starts some BS about their human rights we bring up the Uyghurs and Tianennmen Square.
Now every time we bring up human rights while supporting Genocide we are nothing more than giant hypocrites.
We needs to look in the mirror instead of at China.
I totally agree. This is a gesture of political hostility more than a sincere memorial.
Maybe China will respond with a memorial to the victims of European colonialism. And the petty back-and-forth will continue.
Taiwan is not a country. Where are my social credits!?
Return your credit and visit my country. We will show what the true Chinese culture is. Since the CCP deleted all that after the civil war.
Yes yes, nihao and let's fight against the Koreans and japanese like in ancient times. Bring the fire lances and rocket propelled arrows for the lulz.
Maybe some are interested in that: https://eletees.com/product/tiananmen-square-china-1989-shirt
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
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...
Whataboutism
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.
1000 upvotes for you. Someone with rational thinking that can see the hypocrisy.
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?
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.]
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
lol? Brussels is a gang-infested shithole and this is what they spend money on?
Focus on sorting out our own cities and countries.
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.
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.
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.