According to Xinhua News Agency reported on June 15, following two weeks ago by unidentified persons splashed red paint to protest the Faroe Islands whaling activities, Denmark’s iconic sculpture “The Little Mermaid” was again vandalized on the 13th and night, and the sculpture was splashed with blue paint.

The criminals also left the words “Free Abdullah” in Danish on the open space in front of the sculpture. Copenhagen police said that a local resident found someone vandalizing the sculpture while walking his dog at night and reported the crime.

Police are looking for a female suspect who is about 1.7 meters tall and has blond hair. At present, it is not clear who “Abdullah” is referring to.

According to Cui Lin, a Chinese tour guide working in Denmark, when she took a group to the “Little Mermaid” scenic spot on the morning of the 14th, she found that the left half of the sculpture and its legs were splashed with blue paint. The police set up a cordon around the scenic spot, and tourists can only visit the mermaid from a distance. When Xia Spectrum, the owner of Crown Restaurant, passed by the place around 10 am, he found that the paint had basically been cleaned.

On the night of May 29, unidentified persons poured red paint on the “Little Mermaid” sculpture and wrote the words “Denmark, defend the Faroe Islands whales” on the space in front of the sculpture.

The “Little Mermaid” sculpture is located on the harbor rock in Copenhagen’s Long Beach Park. It was created by Danish sculptor Edward Eriksson based on Andersen’s fairy tale. In history, the “Little Mermaid” sculpture has also been damaged many times.

Who suffered for the “Little Mermaid”?

According to People’s Daily news on the 14th, Denmark, which is known for its highest happiness index and highly civilized society, recently had an uncivilized thing happen – the bronze statue of the Little Mermaid, one of Denmark’s landmarks, was splashed with red paint. The original bronze-colored exquisite statue is now “bloody” from beginning to end, which makes many viewers feel reluctant to look directly.

The Little Mermaid statue is a symbol of Denmark and can be regarded as a national treasure. It is based on the image of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale and is regarded as the embodiment of purity and kindness, and has a world-renowned reputation. The destruction of the Little Mermaid statue has caused great controversy in Denmark and many other countries. The paint splitter is presumed to be an animal protection activist, because on the ground in front of the statue, it is also written in the same red paint that Denmark has been defending the whaling practice of the Faroe Islands.

The tradition of Faroe fishermen hunting long-limbed pilot whales every summer has continued for more than 400 years. Unlike some countries such as Japan, which engage in large-scale whaling driven by commercial interests all year round, the natural conditions of the Faroe Islands are harsh, the soil is poor, and the locals cannot rely on the harvest of crops to survive, and the whale meat and blubber hunted are an important source of food for them. Although the annual killing amount is only about 0% of the total number of this species. 1%, but the large red blood stains left by fishermen after slaughtering whales in the shallows are still unacceptable to people, and it has attracted angry condemnation from animal advocates.

However, a friend living in Denmark told me that the Faroe Islands are located between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. Like Greenland, they are an overseas self-governing territory of Denmark, with self-government, parliament and independent executive power. At the same time, although Denmark is a member of the International Whaling Commission, whaling in the Faroe Islands is not regulated by the International Whaling Commission, but by the local government. So protesting to the Danish government to stop whaling is like “going to the Fire Temple to beg for rain” – looking for the wrong door.

As a result, the protests have created the following vicious circle – some animal protection activists have protested to the Danish government in various forms every year to no avail; radical protesters are willing to destroy Denmark’s national treasure to attract attention from all walks of life, but the result is still unsuccessful. The tradition of whaling is still the same, and the paint splashers are difficult to track down, leaving the innocent little mermaid in a state of mourning.

Since the bronze statue of the Little Mermaid was completed in 1913, it has been “beheaded”, “arm broken”, and thrown into the sea from the base… Among all kinds of people with different cultural backgrounds, beliefs, or pursuits, some continue to use people’s attention to the Little Mermaid to attract the attention of public opinion through harmful behavior; some even take out their anger on the Little Mermaid just because their opinions are not satisfied.

The English proverb goes: “Freedom is too much, everything is messed up.” Whether it is the freedom to inherit the tradition, or the freedom to express protest, it should not lose its boundaries and lose its boundaries. Freedom should be an opportunity to make oneself better. Perhaps in a modern civilized society, it is more effective to achieve freedom of expression in a more civilized way. In the field of anti-whaling, some marine environmental organizations are actively taking action, and communication and exchange have been ongoing through the collection of signatures, petitions, and other means, and some progress has been made. The radical protests in Denmark will only destroy the national cultural relics while compromising the justice of environmental protection.

Expressing diverse ideas does not mean that confrontation can be carried out without limit. The elements of civilization in modern society cannot lack rationality and tolerance.