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.

  • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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    186 months ago

    If China didn’t censor everything to do with something that totally didn’t happen I’m sure they’d be very upset.

  • @bloor@feddit.de
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    706 months ago

    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.

    • @nivenkos@lemmy.world
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      -26 months ago

      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.

  • qaz
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    166 months ago

    What about banning imports from any company that is using forced labour?

      • qaz
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        06 months ago

        There should be at least some companies that don’t rely on prisoners or other companies that use forced labour.

        • @Nudding@lemmy.world
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          36 months ago

          Shouldn’t we apply pressure by not dealing with any countries with slavery written into their constitution?

    • @cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
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      26 months ago

      ehm… mostly sounds good, but why only imports? Why not ban any sales of products (and services) that use forced labor?

      • qaz
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        26 months ago

        Because the EU can’t ban sales of products in China.

        • @cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
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          26 months ago

          I dont know what country you’re in but mostly any country has companies that use or buy parts that use forced labour. Its not only imported goods that use it.

  • @Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Virtue signaling from Europe while still supporting israel’s Genocide and even inviting them to Eurovision.

    Shamelessness knows no bounds.

    • @IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Immediately cutting ties with anyone who doesn’t do what you say sounds like a winning strategy.

        • @IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world
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          -16 months ago

          It is a special case and there needs to be a global demand to push back and start sanctions. It’s just not going to happen as quickly as people want , nor will rhetoric. A deal needs to be struck which means you when with the asshole. Unless you want to bring in force.

    • @0x815@feddit.deOP
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      126 months ago

      @branchial

      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.

    • @jettrscga@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I saw your “liberationschool” link about this topic in a previous comment.

      That same website is heavily pro-Russian in the Ukraine war discussion, and it’s already trying to re-write events that we’ve witnessed in the last couple years.

      You’re just trying to spread propaganda.

    • @Kissaki@feddit.de
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      326 months ago

      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?

    • @AbsorbsQuickly@lemmy.world
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      56 months ago

      No but I’m sure you could get people to organize a party to celebrate those war criminals dying. I did that when Kissinger finally shit himself to death!

  • Stockente
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    -226 months ago

    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

    • @0x815@feddit.deOP
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      6 months ago

      @Stockente

      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.]

    • @ebikefolder@feddit.de
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      226 months ago

      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.

    • @captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      66 months ago

      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.

  • @RedPandaRaider@feddit.de
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    76 months ago

    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?

    • BennyHill500
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      -76 months ago

      Well that was after the fall of the ussr and they want to build the narrative that communism is bad

      • @0x815@feddit.deOP
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        6 months ago

        @BennyHill500, there are no such things as communism or capitalism (or any other systems), there are many different variations of them.

        Tiananmen Square Massacre

        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.

  • @turkishdelight@lemmy.ml
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    -86 months ago

    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.

    • @0x815@feddit.deOP
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      6 months ago

      @turkishdelight @Stockente

      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.]

      • @turkishdelight@lemmy.ml
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        06 months ago

        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.

        • @0x815@feddit.deOP
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          06 months ago

          @turkishdelight

          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.

    • Stockente
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      -86 months ago

      This sub is basically european propaganda. It’s like watching russian facebook

  • @Sylvartas@lemmy.world
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    -46 months ago

    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…

  • @nivenkos@lemmy.world
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    -246 months ago

    lol? Brussels is a gang-infested shithole and this is what they spend money on?

    Focus on sorting out our own cities and countries.

  • @Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    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

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html

    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