Who Burned Down the Sculpture of People's Republic of China's President Xi Jinping at a California Park? | Federal prosecutors say Weiming Chen’s ‘CCP Virus’ was destroyed by men working for China.

[Golwalkar]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yermo, Calif.

The roadside attraction is an American invention, and none could be more quintessentially American than the one abutting the northbound lane of Interstate 15, smack dab in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

Liberty Statue Park is an open-air memorial to the human desire for freedom. Located on a 36-acre tract, it was founded in 2017 by Chinese-born dissident artist Weiming Chen. The first sculpture Mr. Chen, 66, made for the space was a 15-foot-high bust of the Native American warrior Crazy Horse. In 2018 Mr. Chen added a statue of Li Wangyang, a Chinese labor activist who died under mysterious circumstances in 2012.

The following year, he created what the park heralds as “the world’s largest monument to the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.” The sculpture stands atop a bronze-relief mural depicting scenes from June 4, 1989, when the Chinese government brutally suppressed a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration in the heart of Beijing. Another statue, “Tank Man,” is a life-size portrayal of the moment an unidentified man holding a briefcase defiantly stared down a column of tanks at Tiananmen.

 

On June 4, 2021, Mr. Chen added his most provocative piece. “CCP Virus” was an arrestingly macabre bust of Xi Jinping, depicting the Chinese Communist Party chief’s head as a giant coronavirus molecule. The next month, the fiberglass statue was burned to the ground. Mr. Chen didn’t hesitate to assign blame. “Something like this is not a personal action but a Chinese government action against us and the American system of free speech,” he said in a statement to the press. “They want the truth about the origins of the COVID-19 virus to be hidden from the world.”

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/burned-down-xi-jinping-california-sculpture-park-liberty-chinese-vandals-covid-beijing-ccp-america-art-11650055883

 

Weiming Chen vows to restore ‘CCP Virus’ after fire destroys artwork in Yermo's Liberty Sculpture Park

https://www.vvdailypress.com/story/news/2021/07/23/artist-weiming-chens-ccp-virus-sculpture-destroyed-yermos-liberty-sculpture-park/8079590002/