Give the Chinese students their history back! Tiananmen June 4, 1989

Appeal to the press, culture- and art institutions, artists, libraries, universities and others

Never Forget Tiananmen Square, June 4^th, 1989

Dear

I send this mail in memory of the massacre in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. It is forbidden to mention the massacre in China. Sadly the same restrictions are seen in the once free Hong Kong. All media articles, fliers etc. on ths subject have been collected by the, now imprisoned, democracy movement in Hong Kong, and can be downloaded for free here. I send you this mail and all the documents, so that you can help in giving the Chinese and Hong Kongers their story back.

In memory of the 35^thanniversary of the massacre, I enclose this appeal, and hope that you will pass it on to your Chinese friends, institutions, and others who might benefit from remembering this landmark event.

In 1997, I erected an 8 meter tall monument in Hong Kong in memorial of the massacre. As part of Chinas takeover and suppresion of free speech in Hong Kong, they removed the Pillar of Shame to use it in a court case agarinst the democracy movement. The Pillar of Shame was the only monument in China to commemorate the thousands who died at the Tiananmen Square massacre.

By removing the sculpture, China is trying to erase the event from their history. At present the Pillar of Shame is in a container in Hong Kong.

Placing this sculpture in Hong Kong cost me a permanent expulsion from China and two expulsions from Hong Kong. I think it's important that artists, cultural groups, and others defend human rights, and that we use our freedom of speech to tell the story of the massacre. I hope that you will help in doing this.

35 years after the massacre history seems to be tragically repeating itself. Now with Hong Kong as the epicenter where Chinas National Security Laws in Hong Kong, effectively crushes the city's autonomy, and breaking Chinas promise of 'One Country - Two Systems'

I hereby encourage everyone to protest against China’s assault on Hong Kong citizens.

Let us remeber the youth that lost their life at Tiananmen Square and let us support the diaspora around the world, that China has forced to flee their countries.

Kind regards,

Jens Galschiøt

Appeal to the press, culture- and art institutions, artists, working places, libraries, universities and others.

Give the Chinese students their history back!

Help mark the 35^th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. In 1989, Chinese students occupied Tiananmen Square in Beijing for months in an attempt to press the Chinese government to take steps towards democracy and to fight against corruption. But on the 4^th June, 1989, the regime sent in the army against the unarmed students.

Give the Chinese their story back. It is forbidden to mention the story in China, but all the students’ newspaper articles, fliers etc. have been collected by the democracy movement in Hong Kong. These collections of Chinese and English documents have now been put on the Internet where they can be downloaded for free.

Many of the young dissidents were imprisoned in the wake of the crackdown. Some are still in jail but they are no longer young. China still practices massive censorship of information abour the massacre. And it is impossible for Chinese people to obtain uncensored information about the event.

In China the encroachments is getting worse and now includes Hong Kong. The year Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo died after having been imprisonned several times in China, and artists like Ai Weiwei and Badiucao are exiled from China. But these prominent artists are only the tip of the iceberg, there are thousands of artists, environmental activists and others imprisoned. And all they have done is defend their most basic human rights.

Thousands of Chinese students are today studying at universities and other institutions of education in the West. Most of them do not even know their own history due to the censorship. You can help remedy this.

Therefore we invite all pro-democracy institutions, scholars and working colleagues to download and print out this documentation or put it on a USB flash drive. Place it on the shelves of libraries and hand it out as a gift to Chinese students on the 4^th June, the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre.

This way we can make a contribution to preserve the memory of the victims, and maybe inspire a new generation of Chinese to see democracy as a possibility in China.

We call on everybody to support this initiative and to mail this appeal to other institutions of education where there are Chinese students, or others who might be interested in preserving and distributing knowledge about the Tiananmen massacre.

The initiative of this appeal and information campaign is a co-operation between the democracy movement in Hong Kong and Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot.