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.
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.
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.
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…
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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…
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.
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
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
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.
Only one of those countries currently still is a dictatorship.
Removed by mod
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?
Your honest stance is that
No. You missed my point, and the overall spirit of my comment.
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.
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?
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.
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!
