The West should ban companies from cooperating with totalitarian regimes like China in the suppression of democracy and free speech.
The statue by Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot depicts a “Pillar of Shame” that shows in wrenching and emotional detail the suffering of dozens of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
“They really want to destroy everything about a story that China doesn’t want people to know about,” Galschiot told ArtNet, an art news site. “I hope the art institutions around the world will do something [about this]. This is a monument that belongs to art. We call for action but there is not much time.”
Galschiot told ArtNet that his work served as not just a monument, but a tombstone for those massacred at Tiananmen. “We all believed that one day, we will put it in Tiananmen Square in Beijing,” the artist said. “One day, China will change. It was our dream, but now it’s a nightmare.”
The Hong Kong organization, called the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, responded with its own letter that protested the threatened removal. It reasonably pointed out that after more than 20 years, giving the organization just a few days to arrange the fragile statue’s removal was unacceptable.
The artist described the threat of the statue’s removal as unfair and immoral.
Galschiot, who was in Hong Kong in 1997 for the initial installation, told ArtNet: “It felt scary, the week before the handover. But after a couple of months, nothing happened. China made the arrangements of one country, two systems and it was okay. But now, there’s only one country, one system.”
Beijing’s confidence and power has grown in Hong Kong, following the brutal suppression of the city’s pro-democracy protests in 2019 to 2020, a new more Chinese nationalist educational curriculum, a national security law that criminalizes political opinion against Beijing, and a national security hotline where pro-democracy activists can be reported.
The university cited legal advice in its decision to remove the statue, and is likely under increasing pressure from Beijing to remove art, culture, and scholarship that is supportive of democracy.
The Chicago and Hong Kong offices of Mayer Brown did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Mayer Brown public relations contact is the same for Beijing and Hong Kong.
While Mayer Brown has law offices in 24 cities globally—including Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and Brussels—and so is arguably a reasonable choice for navigating this complex international issue, the university’s involvement of a U.S.-based firm has the effect, intended or not, of putting some of the blame for this cultural outrage onto the United States.
Any argument that all clients deserve legal representation does not wash here. The university is not facing charges in a courtroom. There are plenty of Hong Kong lawyers who could have sent the letter at a fraction of the cost. And totalitarian dictatorships, such as Beijing and the universities in Hong Kong that must increasingly serve the Chinese Communist Party, arguably do not deserve American legal services in their attempts to erase their own bloody history.
The leadership of Mayer Brown shows a profound lack of judgement in accepting this morally reprehensible task. The situation points to the need for new American, British, and European laws against businesses that assist in the suppression of democracy and free speech abroad. For a few pennies, unscrupulous businesses are willing to shill for Beijing, smear the good name of America and its long history of defending freedom and democracy around the world.