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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
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If events have nothing to do with artistic freedom, I cannot understand why a carnival at Chater Garden and the Reunification Cup matches at Victoria Park were easily approved. Several hundreds of celebration activities are now scheduled to be held at Council venues. If there is no artistic freedom, will activities be so easily approved?
If you infer that examples of the Pillar of Shame and the film festival illustrate the Council's protection of artistic freedom, you are just politicising things. If that is really the case, one or two examples of rejection can be viewed as a stifling of popular art creation and freedom. You all know that 57,000 citizens attended the June 4 event at the Victoria Park. May I ask which piece of Art was ever appreciated by so many people in a matter of two or three hours? I cannot say for sure whether new artists have been inspired. If approval was not given for the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Democratic Movement to stage the June 4 event and approval was not given for the display of the Pillar of Shame at Victoria Park, can it be said that we had deprived the public of the chance to join the activity and see the Pillar? It would be ridiculous to make this assumption.
THE HON. FRED LI WAH-MING (in Cantonese):—Mr. Chairman, I would like to respond to speeches by some of my colleagues. I think we should focus on the motion of debate. Fellow colleagues of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong and the Liberal Party think there is a motive behind the amendment moved by the Democratic Party in regard to the incident of the Pillar of Shame. I won't deny this. I am a frank person, I will not deny what is true. We want to include protection of artistic freedom in the amendment motion because we do not want another incident similar to that of the Pillar of Shame. We want to do away with giving approval for use of venues on the basis of personal favour. We do not want censorship on an object of visual art when promoting visual art.
When I was following the debate here, I had a sudden idea. The faces on the Pillar of Shame show grief. If you did not go to see it for yourself, maybe you saw it on television or photographs. Imagine the faces to be Chinese people suffering during the invasion of the Eight Power Allied Forces and you will see the Pillar as a memorial of the recovery of China and the defeat of the Allied Forces. If I give you this interpretation, I am sure I will have your support. However, the sculptor said it depicted human rights and the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Democratic Movement in China called it a commemorative statue of the June 4 incident. Its meaning therefore changed completely. My idea may seem silly, but it brings out the point that all depends on how we look at an object of art. If we call something approved by the Chinese government and disapprove of something it objects to, we will be carrying out censorship. It would be wrong for us to do so. By putting in protection of artistic freedom as in the amendment moved by Mr. Kwok Bit-chun, we aim to stop all forms of censorship.
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