A university in Hong Kong has decided to remove a sculpture by the Danish artist Jens Galschiøt. It has great effect.

The eight-meter-high “Column of Shame” sculpture has stood inside the University of Hong Kong area since 1997 and is a monument to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

But last week, the university management decided to be organized which has borrowed the sculpture by Galschiøt to remove the statue. This shows that it is necessary to keep up with the image quality in Hong Kong, which can be beaten down on political dissidents.

The organization that has managed the statue is a democracy organization where several members are accused of having violated a controversial security law.

The copper sculpture «Pillar of Shame» shows 50 tormented, suffering faces. The sculptor Jens Galschiøt has reached out to the hired man and lawyer to ensure that the statue becomes a safe carrier back to Denmark. He had he assumed the sculpture had been in Hong Kong.

– These people (in the democracy organization, editor’s note) are in prison. And now they say I have to take down in four days, Galschiøt told Reuters.

– I think it’s a kind of warning that they will destroy the culture if it can not go down. It’s a kind of mafia business. I’m really shocked, he says.

The fact that the artwork has been removed has led to many reactions, not least in Denmark. Jens Galschiøt receives support from several Danish politicians who demand that Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod must call the Chinese ambassador to China on the carpet.