撤去命令の天安門事件追悼像、制作のデンマーク人彫刻家が引き渡し要求

【香港ＡＦＰ＝時事】香港大学（ＨＫＵ）が構内に設置されていた天安門事件の犠牲者を追悼する記念像の撤去を命じた問題をめぐり、制作を手掛けたデンマーク人彫刻家イェンス・ガルシュット氏が像を海外に持ち出すため弁護士を雇ったことが分かった。（写真は香港大学の構内にある天安門事件の犠牲者を追悼する記念像「国恥の柱」）
　撤去が命じられたのは高さ８メートルの「国恥の柱」で、香港が中国に返還された１９９７年から同大学に設置されている。
　像は拷問され苦悶（くもん）の表情を浮かべる５０人の体が積み重ねられたデザインで、１９８９年に中国・北京の天安門広場に民主化を求め集まり、軍に殺害されたデモの参加者を追悼している。
　香港当局が反体制派の取り締まりを強化する中、同大は先週、「法的な助言」を理由に像を１３日午後５時（日本時間同６時）までに撤去するよう命じた。
　ガルシュット氏はＡＦＰに対し、現地の弁護士を雇い、大学側に像の処遇について協議したいと申し入れたと述べた。
　同氏はＥメールで「彫像に対する私の所有権が尊重され、秩序ある状況で、まったく破損されずに香港から移送されることを望んでいる」と説明した。
　像が香港にとどまる方がいいとは思っているが、当局により破壊された場合、香港市民が「国恥の柱の破片をできるだけ多く」集めるべきだとしている。
　「破片は『帝国が滅びても芸術は残る』ということを象徴するような作品を創るのに使えるかもしれない」
　ガルシュット氏はまた、香港で像の３Ｄスキャンを取りミニチュア版を製造していた人にも連絡を取ったと述べた。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2021/10/14-14:25）

The Danish artist behind a Hong Kong sculpture mourning those killed in Tiananmen Square has instructed a lawyer to secure his work and bring it overseas after the city's flagship university ordered its sudden removal.
The eight-metre (26-feet) high Pillar of Shame by Jens Galschiot has sat on the University of Hong Kong's (HKU) campus since 1997, the year the city was handed back to China.
It features 50 anguished faces and tortured bodies piled on one another and commemorates democracy protesters killed by Chinese troops around Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Last week Hong Kong's oldest university ordered it to be removed by 5pm on Wednesday citing legal advice as authorities crack down on dissent.
Galschiot told AFP he had hired a local lawyer and requested a hearing with the university over the future of the pillar.
I hope that my ownership of the sculpture will be respected and that I will be able to transport the sculpture out of Hong Kong under orderly conditions and without it having suffered from any damage, he told AFP via email.
The University of Hong Kong said it was still seeking legal advice and working with related parties to handle matters in a legal and reasonable manner -- and as the 5pm deadline passed authorities made no move on the sculpture.
Galschiot said he would prefer the statue to have stayed in the city. If it was destroyed by authorities, he said, Hong Kongers should collect as many pieces of the Pillar of Shame as possible.
These pieces may be used to make some symbolic manifestation that 'Empires pass away - but art persists', the artist said.
Galschiot said he had also been in contact with people in Hong Kong who were making 3D scans of the sculpture to produce miniature versions.
- Crackdown on dissent -
HKU's removal order was penned by global law firm Mayer Brown and addressed to the Hong Kong Alliance, a now disbanded organisation that used to organise the city's annual Tiananmen remembrance vigils.
Mayer Brown said the university was a longstanding client who was being helped to understand and comply with current law.
Our legal advice is not intended as commentary on current or historical events, a spokesperson told AFP.
Hong Kong used to be the one place in China where mass remembrance of Tiananmen's dead was still tolerated.
But the city is being remoulded in the mainland's own authoritarian image in the wake of huge and often violent democracy protests two years ago.
Scores of opposition figures have been jailed or fled overseas and authorities have also embarked on a mission to rewrite history and make Hong Kong more patriotic.
Many of the alliance's leaders have been arrested over the last year and the last two vigils have been banned with officials citing the coronavirus.
Authorities have also warned that commemorating Tiananmen could constitute subversion under a new national security law that Beijing imposed on the city last year.
A museum run by the alliance was also raided and shuttered, its exhibits carted away in police vans.
Hong Kong boasts some of Asia's finest universities and long billed itself as a bastion of academic freedom.
But university management teams have become key enforcers of the state's new push for political orthodoxy.
Many academics critical of the government have found their contracts terminated while multiple universities, including HKU, have also severed ties with their student unions.
In recent days, students and residents flocked to the Pillar of Shame to take photos and selfies.
Nowadays I have become more careful in daily life on campus, an art student visiting the pillar, who gave just his first name Vincent, told AFP on Wednesday.
At the back of my head I am always thinking about what things at the university are no longer allowed.