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.
why not cut ties because of the people in power? people in power today are not the ones that made these crimes,
except chinai’m stupidAnd also excepting Israel, Kongo, Russia, UAE, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan and still the USA.
And on a side note Xi Jinping, the man in power today, didn’t do the TS massacre, he came to power in 2012
Most of these sound quite reasonable, if i think about it.
These were just in the front of my mind at that moment and while it would be morally good if we could flip the finger to them, it would be really stupid. Just losing Russian gas already caused an energy crisis and inflation, completely refusing middle eastern oil, Congolese Cobalt, Copper, Silver, Gold, Diamonds, Uranium etc and the general relations with the USA, a close ally and country with the probably biggest military would not just be crisis-inducing, it would be economical and political suicide.
to be fair losing russian gas accelerated the adoption of better energy sourge at record speed, so it’s really was a bad thing?
So he should have no problem acknowledging the issue and seeking reconciliation.
Yeah! I mean, if things were shit it in the past it seems silly to do anything to fix it now! Duh! 🤪
/s, obviously…
Where do you take that from? What I’m saying is that these populist dogpiling calls are nonsense, because most nations have a similar oppressive history and/or present. Why must we put up a trade ban on exclusively China for not apologizing for the TS massacre, but not on turkey for the Armenian genocide? If it’s about todays oppression and exploitation why exclusively China and not UAE, Qatar, Israel or Congo? If it’s about supposedly threatening war, why exclusively China and not the USA? If it’s about spying, why exclusively China and not Russia or the USA? For each issue China has, there is at least one other nation doing the same for which we would never consider a similar treatment. Russia now has some trade restrictions, but not for its USSR crimes, not for spying, it took a full-fledged war for some rules (with tummy ache).
It seems like the powers-that-be are trying to manufacture animosity toward China among the commoners. I guess that means they see China as a threat and want us to fight China for them. They’ll do anything to distract from the class war but I know it wasn’t the Chinese people that shipped jobs to China, it was the western capitalists.
We’ll see this finally happening when China attacks Taiwan.
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.
I tend to block anyone with an @hexbear on sight even if they’re making an innocuous comment. It’s takes a certain type of person to choose that instance. I’m at like 30 blocks including their instance and yea my feed is solid.
it takes a certain kind of person
I don’t think many of them are people, they’re LLMs. Those that are actually people didn’t choose Hexbear, their bosses who pay them to be shills chose it.
Similar problems at lemmy.ml but not as bad.
Same. Lemmygrad is also on my shitlist.
I’ve got 53 users blocked, plus 2 instances and a dozen or so communities on otherwise sane instances. Lemmy is nice now.
Right? It is wonderfull. I also ended up blocking lemmy.ml and switching all .ml communities to alternatives. That is also a step I can recommend.
Yeah I’ve blocked most communities there except for a handful that don’t have real alternatives, else I would.
Can you share the blocklist on lemmy, and am I able to import it?
Seems not to be the case… At least there’s no straightforward way. I guess I could just copy & paste the list from my settings, but you’d still have to add them manually, one by one.
That’s a good question, I have no idea. Let me poke around a bit.
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?
ehm… mostly sounds good, but why only imports? Why not ban any sales of products (and services) that use forced labor?
Because the EU can’t ban sales of products in China.
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.
Parts are also imports
So no business with the US?
There should be at least some companies that don’t rely on prisoners or other companies that use forced labour.
Shouldn’t we apply pressure by not dealing with any countries with slavery written into their constitution?
That statue could only be better if Winnie Pooh was sitting on top of it
Any local “street vandals” taking notes? A Winnie the Pooh stuffie with a strategically ripped hole and a big free-standing ladder is all that would be needed…
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…
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.
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.
No supporting Genocide while criticizing others just makes you a giant hypocrite
I assume there’s a missing coma after the no. In any case, are you arguing that’s better to do nothing than to do only half?
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.
No country on earth had the moral high ground. All have sins. But some have taken steps to redeem, starting with acceptance.
We needs to look in the mirror instead of at China.
Let’s do both!
Let’s look in the mirror first before criticizing others. Nobody else in the world is looking at this with anything but giant disgust for the hypocrisy. We cannot criticize another regime about human rights while literally supporting Genocide.
Nah, let’s go both
Empty words without meaning sure don’t mean anything to them.
That’s the neat part about being an authoritarian regimen, you don’t care what they think about you. Else you would stop the authoritarianism.
So let’s do both.
Immediately cutting ties with anyone who doesn’t do what you say sounds like a winning strategy.
Bruh. I’d consider running a genocide to be a special case…
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.
Hmm I see what you mean I think, thabks for the reply
You’d defend the companies selling weapons to Hitler in WW2 to commit the Holocaust?
Don’t you have a bad faith argument to make somewhere else?
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.
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
Maybe some are interested in that: https://eletees.com/product/tiananmen-square-china-1989-shirt
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.
There’s a lot wrong with Western colonization, but this whataboutism is once again out of place.
One difference between contemporary Europe and contemporary China is that the former consists mostly of democracies, and even though they may be imperfect democracies, there is freedom of speech.
For example, you are free to criticise your country’s history, the actual politics, or freely express your opinion on any subject you want.
However, if you are organising candlelight vigils in the city of Hong Kong on the anniversary of the Chinese military’s crushing of the 1989 protests in Beijing at Tiananmen Square, you go to jail.
Three former organisers of Hong Kong’s annual vigil in remembrance of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests have lost their bid to overturn their conviction. A judge quashed the appeal saying there was enough evidence to uphold the decision. The trio received a four-and-a-half-month sentence last year.
[Edit typo.]
Yet, you prance about telling everybody that displaying one memorial against an atrocity is worth less if some other (arbitrarily chosen) atrocity isn’t admitted and remembered the same way. That’s BS. Just as condemning Belgium here when the exhibition is hosted by the EU.
It is worth less in the sense that its impact is less than it could be. Like for example, would you be moved by such a statue being set up in Pyongyang or in 1946 Germany? Of course not. The statue only works because and as long as Europe, the EU, Belgium or the artists who created the statue can claim a moral superiority over China. That superiority largely hinges on whether and how past atrocities are admitted, rectified and prevented from happening again.
Also, what has people like the commenter above outraged is that such a statue is not displayed in a contextless moral void but serves as a propaganda tool to diminish Western or European human rights violations in past and present - even if not intended by the creator. “But look at China” itself is a huge whataboutist argument. If the moral evaluation of states and such is too emotional a topic to see this point, then maybe you can see it at work in the climate catastrophe. “But look at China” has been and is a very popular argument despite being both completely illogical and actually wrong, and it’s a danger to the continuation of our civilization.
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?
whataboutism is a healthy response to hypocrites.
Is it?
What about the Armenian genocide? Does it get taught in Turkish schools? Is there a statue?
What about Holodomor? Does that get taught in Russian schools? Is there a statue?
What about the up to 50 million who died as a consequence of the Great Leap Forward? Is there a statue commemorating them?
Building a statue does not let you off the hook from mass murder.
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Still no statue though
Because that’s what’s really important: a statue.
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.]
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.
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.
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.
It’s just the usual clumsy wumao attempt at whataboutism
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.
No one claims that democracy is perfect (or will ever be). But another major reason why it is superior to dictatorship is that, for example, you are free to report these crimes and express your opinion as you just did in your post, without any negative personal consequences for you nor your family, and your post won’t be censored.
If you write a post in China in memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre, what do you think would happen?
Bad things no doubt. But then I didn’t contest China’s characterization.
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.
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What would you think about a person asking for the inclusion of some injured/killed KZ guards in a Holocaust memorial? Just asking because that’s about what we think about you
I think that would be awful. I also think equating a color revolution with the holocaust is fascist apologia.
Lazy attempts at straw man-arguments aside: You answered my question with “Awful”. That’s pretty much the answer, yes. We think you are awful.
Can’t seem to find anyone asking for your take. Thanks for sharing regardless!
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?
So… Your honest stance is that “security personnel” who fired automatic weapons into defenseless, non-violent crowds should be memorialized because a handful of them were killed in the ensuing chaos?
How about this one: If someone is charging you with a machete, you should just stand still so you don’t accidentally hurt them defending yourself? Or are you saying that if you both die, you should both have your pictures and caskets side by side at the memorial service?
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.
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.
Basic guide:
- The oppressed have been killing oppressors? Quite cool actually.
- The oppressors have been doing anything? Not cool.
- The oppressors are killing the oppressed? Absolutely not cool.
You see?
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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!
