PART OF YOUR WORLD

‘Free Hong Kong’ Scrawled on Copenhagen’s Famous Little Mermaid Statue

Three lines in red, reading “Free Hong Kong,” were painted on the statue before dawn on Monday.

Vandals have scrawled “Free Hong Kong” in bright red paint onto Denmark’s most famous landmark—the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen. More than one million tourists visit the statue every year and it’s especially popular with Chinese tourists, Reuters reports. The statue is 107 years old and depicts the little mermaid from 19th-century Danish author Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the same name. Three lines in red, reading “Free Hong Kong,” were painted onto the rock underneath the famous bronze statue. The same text is written smaller in white next to the big red slogan. No one has been arrested for the incident, which happened before dawn on Monday morning.