Hong Kong's 'Pillar of Shame' statue, which commemorates the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre, was removed in the middle of the night

• The University of Hong Kong removed the "Pillar of Shame" statue from its campus.
• The sculpture stood for two decades as a reminder of the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

A famous statue at the University of Hong Kong that for more than two decades stood as a memorial to the protesters at the Tiananmen Square massacre has been removed, the university said on Wednesday.

The University of Hong Kong's council decided on the removal "based on external legal advice and risk assessment for the best interest of the University," the institution said in a statement.

The 26-foot "Pillar of Shame" depicted 50 twisted human torsos, commemorating those killed in the bloody crackdown at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4, 1989. The phrase "The old cannot kill the young forever" was carved into the statue's base.

Jens Galschiøt, the Danish artist who created the statue, called it a reminder of "a shameful event which must never reoccur." He sculpted the "Pillar of Shame" in 1997, the same year Hong Kong was returned to China from the UK.

Galschiøt told The BBC that the removal was "really brutal," comparing it to the destruction of gravestones, and added that he might consider suing the university and authorities. Galschiøt did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

The statue's clearance marks yet another step in Beijing's crackdown on dissent and free speech, particularly in Hong Kong, where police quelled mass protests in 2019 and arrested the staff of a pro-democracy newspaper. Last year, China introduced a sweeping law in Hong Kong that was touted as an anti-terrorism and security rule but has been criticized as a broad means to curb protests and diminish the city's autonomy.

More than 28 civil-society and activist groups lobbied to keep the "Pillar of Shame" — one of the last few tributes to the massacre remaining in Hong Kong — when the University of Hong Kong demanded it be removed in October.

"No party has ever obtained any approval from the University to display the statue on campus, and the University has the right to take appropriate actions to handle it at any time," the council said in its Wednesday statement.

The university also said it was concerned about "safety issues," describing the "Pillar of Shame" as a "fragile statue."

At midnight on Thursday, yellow construction barriers were set up around the copper statue, and construction workers dismantled it, CNN reported. The BBC's Grace Tsoi said she could hear drilling and cracking, but that journalists on the scene couldn't see what was happening.

The statue has been put in storage, the university said in its statement.

Hundreds of peaceful demonstrators, many of whom were students, were slain in the Tiananmen Square massacre when the Chinese government sent troops and tanks to quash protests in 1989.

China has vigilantly censored any mention of the massacre in media outlets and on social-media platforms, but a mass candlelight vigil is held on its anniversary in Hong Kong's Victoria Park every year.

The University of Hong Kong did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.