The Chinese Taliban

No, it is not about terror, though that is the first thing which may come to mind while reading the title, as it is synonymous with Taliban. What an irony it is when UN plans to subsidize the monthly wages of Taliban-run Interior Ministry personnel who guard UN facilities and to pay them monthly food allowances next year – or in simpler terms UN is going to pay Sirajuddin Haqqani – a designated global terrorist wanted by FBI – to guard them from terrorists in Afghanistan. And USA agrees to waive sanctions so that UN can fund its most wanted terrorist! If Joseph Heller was writing Catch 22 today, he would not have got a better script than this.

This is not about UN supporting Taliban – but about the new found hobby of Hong Kong rulers -so called patriots who voted in the recently concluded “Chinese Elections” (well nothing could be more fake than the farce which took place) – of destroying statues and monuments in the famed Universities of Hong Kong. While the Action is in Hong Kong, the Direction is from Beijing. This time, however, the CCP seems to have taken a leaf out of Taliban’s tactical handbook, trying to change people’s memories and faith by destruction of statues as it was done by Taliban to Bamiyan Buddhas. The two large Buddha images reflected the international environment of the Bamiyan Valley and were influenced by the art and cultures of India, Central Asia and even ancient Greek culture. Mullah Omar ordered Taliban forces to demolish the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 as they were un-Islamic and wanted to erase the centuries old memories from minds of future generations.

A leading Hong Kong university has dismantled and removed a statue from its campus site that for more than two decades has commemorated pro-democracy protesters killed during China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. “Tiananmen” is a taboo topic in mainland China, and the sculpture was one of the few remaining public memorials in the former British colony to remember the bloody crackdown. Known as the “Pillar of Shame,” a creation Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot, the statue was a key symbol of the wide-ranging freedoms promised to Hong Kong at its 1997 return to Chinese rule, which differentiated the global financial hub from the rest of China. The Council of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) said in a statement that it made the decision to remove the statue during a meeting, “based on external legal advice and risk assessment for the best interest of the University”.

Authorities have been clamping down in Hong Kong under a China-imposed national security law that human rights activists say is being used to suppress civil society, jail democracy campaigners and curb basic freedoms. A number of arrests were made and scores of people sent to jail for pro-democracy protests and the famous “Tiananmen Vigil” on the anniversary of the massacre which took place in Tiananmen Square in 1989 – an event which China would want to be globally forgotten. China has never provided a full account of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Officials gave a death toll of about 300, but rights groups and witnesses say thousands may have been killed. Hence the last remaining remnants of the crackdown are being removed or destroyed. Similarities of Mullah Omar’s tactics in Bamiyan and Xi Jinping’s orchestrations in Hong Kong cannot be ignored.

Two more Hong Kong universities removed similar statues from their campuses on a Christmas eve drive. These removals were at Chinese University and Lingnan University in Hong Kong, in a pre dawn strike by the authorities. Obviously, the shots were fired from the University authorities’ shoulders to make it look like an administrative matter. A 6.4 metre tall bronze statue representing the “Goddess of Democracy” holding a flame aloft was removed from a public piazza at Chinese University. The sculpture, which had stood on the campus for more than a decade, was modelled on a 10 metre white plaster and foam statue erected by students in Tiananmen Square to symbolise their resolve to pursue liberty and democracy in China under Communist party rule.

Simultaneously Hong Kong’s Lingnan University took down a wall relief sculpture about the Tiananmen event that depicted the “Goddess of Democracy” and a row of tanks halting before a lone protester known as “tank man”; as well as victims shot by Chinese troops. In the main hall of the student union at Lingnan University, a towering red drawing of the Goddess of Democracy had also been covered over in grey paint. The sculptor of both works is Chen Weiming who plans to sue for the damage to his works, but whom will he file the appeal to?

The disappearances of these symbolic monuments from three universities in quick succession mean that hardly any Tiananmen monuments remain to public view in Hong Kong. Hong Kong had previously been the only place on Chinese soil where such remembrances or commemoration of the pro-democracy protests were permissible. The sculptor of the statue commemorating the victims of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown said that its removal from Hong Kong university was “brutal” but any damage would be symbolic of recent changes in the city under Chinese rule.

In a 57-page white paper published earlier, the Chinese government said it had provided constant support to Hong Kong in developing its “democratic system” and criticised the often-violent 2019 pro-democracy protests. Now the Chinese version of democracy has been fully implemented in Hong Kong after the “Patriots” only legislative election was conducted recently. Forty seats were selected by a committee stacked with Beijing loyalists, while the remaining 30 were filled by professional and business sectors such as finance and engineering, known as functional constituencies. Only 20 of the 90 seats were filled by direct elections. The election – in which only candidates vetted by the government as “patriots” could run was obviously swept by Pro-Beijing candidates under Carrie Lam. The turnout was a record low which raises questions about legitimacy of the elections. But it also highlights the outright rejection of imposition of Chinese political will over Hong Kong by its people, who chose to stay indoors rather than exercise their franchise.

Also, the refusal to vote in election is a stark reminder to those in power in Hong Kong and Beijing that removing statues will not erase the Tiananmen memories from people’s minds.  The stories of oppression and crackdown will pass down the generations till one day the Tiananmen will again rise like a Phoenix from fire.

But for now, when China adopts Taliban strategies as its state policy, what else can we honour CCP and Xi Jinping with, other than equating them with their role models – Taliban. And for Taliban, it is a symbol of victory – The Dragon has been Talibanised!

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