A Hong Kong sculpture commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown faced a looming deadline for its removal from a university campus, as China tightens its control over Asia’s main financial hub.
The University of Hong Kong ordered the towering, two-ton Pillar of Shame to be removed from its property by 5 p.m. Wednesday after receiving a "risk assessment and legal advice,” it said in a statement last week.
But a typhoon that closed the Hong Kong stock market, as well as businesses and schools across the city, raised doubts over whether the order could safely be met. Confusion also lingered over who bore responsibility for removing the exhibit comprised of fused human bodies and featuring the inscription: "The old cannot kill the young forever.”