If you know that you’re going to be arrested and imprisoned if you go there, don’t go there. Radio Free Asia reports (August 4, 2023):
The Danish sculptor whose “Pillar of Shame” statue commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen massacre was seized by Hong Kong authorities said he is saddened by a report that he faces arrest if he tries to return to the city to retrieve his work.
Hong Kong police have declined to comment on a report in a pro-China newspaper Wednesday that they are taking steps to arrest sculptor Jens Galschiøt under a national security law forbidding criticism of the authorities.
Asked about the report in the Sing Tao Daily, Galschiøt told Radio Free Asia on Thursday that he hadn’t heard of any arrest warrant, but didn’t believe such a warrant would be enforceable. . . .
The Sing Tao Daily report also said that if Galschiøt did come to Hong Kong to retrieve his artwork, he could be sent to face trial in mainland China under Article 55 of the law.
Officials removed the sculpture from the University of Hong Kong on December 23, 2021. It had been installed there in 1997.
In an August 11, 2023 open letter “to the Hong Kong Authorities, as to clarify the charges and arrest warrant against me,” Galschiøt writes:
I am greatly surprised to hear that there is a warrant for my arrest. I have not visited Hong Kong since 2012, and I have never committed any criminal activities in the city. My only activities in Hong Kong have been facilitating various art exhibitions, which to my knowledge is not prohibited. . . .
I am completely perplexed by the assertion that there has suddenly been an issuance of an arrest warrant against me, and that my case is even slated for transfer to Mainland China, a country I have never visited.
If Galschiøt is indeed greatly surprised and completely perplexed, he is naive. Fortunately, there seem to be limits to his naiveté.
Galschiøt wants to get Pillar of Shame back; “it’s my private property.” But he knows that “Hong Kong has really changed a lot” in the last few years and that all of his friends in Hong Kong are now in prison. He must also know that in China, being in prison often means being subjected to various forms of torture.
