- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
- china@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
- china@sopuli.xyz
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.
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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.
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.
why not cut ties because of the people in power? people in power today are not the ones that made these crimes, except china
And 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.
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.
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.
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.
You’d defend the companies selling weapons to Hitler in WW2 to commit the Holocaust?
What about banning imports from any company that is using forced labour?
Oh man, the tankies are out in force today, aren’t they?
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.
Taiwan is not a country. Where are my social credits!?
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.
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.
lol? Brussels is a gang-infested shithole and this is what they spend money on?
Focus on sorting out our own cities and countries.
Does it have the names of all the soldiers that got horribly lynched by the mob?
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.
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?
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.
Removed by mod
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?
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!
