page_title: 1989 Mao portrait vandalism incident
hierarchical_section_title: 1989 Mao portrait vandalism incident
caption_attribution_description: English: Mao Zedong-Portrait at the Gate of Heavenly Peace(天安门）, the entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing.
context_page_description: During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the portrait of Mao Zedong at Tiananmen was defaced. At 2:00pm, May 23, 1989, three young protesters from Liuyang, Hunan, posted banners on the wall of the Tiananmen gate's passway. The slogans on the banners read, Time to End the Five Thousand Years of Autocracy and Time to End the Cult of Personality. Shortly after, they threw eggs filled with pigment to the Portrait of Mao Zedong on the Tiananmen Gate. They were immediately caught by members of the Beijing Students' Autonomous Federation. At 5:00pm, they were forced to appear in a press conference and admitted that their activities were totally irrelevant with Movement. At 7:00pm, they were handed to Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. On a TV program broadcast the same day, members of the Movement claim that they had nothing to do with the three youths, and criticized them. At 10:00pm, the defaced portrait of Mao Zedong was taken down and replaced by a spare.
context_section_description: During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the portrait of Mao Zedong at Tiananmen was defaced. At 2:00pm, May 23, 1989, three young protesters from Liuyang, Hunan, posted banners on the wall of the Tiananmen gate's passway. The slogans on the banners read, Time to End the Five Thousand Years of Autocracy (Chinese: 五千年专制到此可以告一段落！; pinyin: Wǔqiān nián zhuānzhì dào cǐ kěyǐ gào yīduànluò!) and Time to End the Cult of Personality (Chinese: 个人崇拜从今可以休矣; pinyin: Gèrén chóngbài cóng jīn kěyǐ xiū yǐ). Shortly after, they threw eggs filled with pigment to the Portrait of Mao Zedong on the Tiananmen Gate. They were immediately caught by members of the Beijing Students' Autonomous Federation (Chinese: 北京高校学生自治联合会, abbr. 高自联). At 5:00pm, they were forced to appear in a press conference and admitted that their activities were totally irrelevant with Movement. At 7:00pm, they were handed to Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. On a TV program broadcast the same day, members of the Movement claim that they had nothing to do with the three youths, and criticized them. At 10:00pm, the defaced portrait of Mao Zedong was taken down and replaced by a spare.
caption: Tiananmen Portrait of Mao Zedong post-replacement (December 1990)
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Mao Zedong Portraet am Eingang zur Verbotenen Stadt", "Image Artist": "Raimond Spekking (raimond.spekking@gmail.com)", "Image Copyright": "The copyright is hold by the artist. This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)"}