There was no vigil in Hong Kong's Victoria Park to remember the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The light from thousands of candles that illuminated this park every June 4 for three decades went out three years ago. The authoritarian and nationalist shake-up in a city that was once a beacon of freedoms in Asia erased any public memory of one of the darkest days in Chinese history.
Replacing the candlelight ceremonies and minutes of silence that made the Communist Party uncomfortable, a Chinese food festival was held this weekend in Victoria Park. The idea of making a "local carnival", as they have called it, came from 26 associations close to Beijing. The proposal quickly convinced the government of the former British colony, handpicked from Beijing and which has prohibited any public act that makes any nod, however small, to the massacre of students that occurred just 34 years ago in the capital.
Chinese flags hung down from some white booths where food was distributed along the main esplanade of Victoria Park. On the streets, up to 5,000 police officers were deployed by the authorities. On the eve of the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, eight people were detained in Hong Kong. Four of them are accused of "disturbing order in public spaces or carrying out acts with seditious intentions." The other four on suspicion of "breaking public peace."
One of those arrested is the artist Sanmu Chen. "Don't forget June 4! People of Hong Kong, don't be afraid of them!" he yelled on a busy street in the popular Causeway Bay shopping district. The police took him away because, according to Chen's interpretation, Chen was "speaking seditious words." Under the national security law, passed three years ago and burying the autonomy Hong Kong has always boasted of, secession charges can be punished with up to life imprisonment.
"Happy anniversary of collective amnesia," a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist who was one of 24 arrested for participating in the first banned vigil in Victoria Park on June 4, 2020, wrote on Sunday in a Telegram group. . It was the last time the activists dared to challenge the authorities. Some of those detained are still in prison. A couple of months ago, a city court sentenced three of the leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance, the group organizing the vigils, to four and a half months in prison.
The security law, in addition to stopping any public demonstration, erased any written memory -books in libraries and schools- about what happened in Tiananmen. Even last year, authorities removed from the University of Hong Kong the only remaining monument in China commemorating the massacre, the Pillar of Shame, a sculpture erected in 1997, when the former colony returned to Chinese rule, which featured 50 anguished faces and tortured bodies piled one on top of the other, remembering the protesters calling for democracy who were killed by Chinese troops in the iconic Tiananmen Square.
The numbers of the dead students were never known. They were hundreds. Maybe thousands. In China, despite the fact that 34 years have passed, a long time accompanied by an explosion of development and opening, three changes of leadership and even a pandemic, the event continues to be taboo. It is one of the most delicate and intractable subjects. Any reference to what happened on Chinese social networks is quickly closed.
"The Chinese government continues to evade accountability for the massacre, which has emboldened arbitrary detention, censorship and surveillance. Yet many people in China and around the world continue to risk their safety and freedom to demand their rights." , says Yaqiu Wang, a researcher in China for Human Rights Watch (HRW), a human rights group that recalls how, in the weeks leading up to the Tiananmen anniversary, the Chinese authorities always restrict the movement and communication of activists and members of the Mothers of Tiananmen, the famous association formed by the relatives of the victims.
"On May 27, 2023, Hunan province authorities detained activist Chen Siming after he refused to delete a message he posted on Twitter recalling what happened. Last year, in the city of Hangzhou, police detained another activist, Xu Guang, who participated in the 1989 pro-democracy movement, shortly after he went to a local police station to demand that the Chinese government recognize the massacre," Wang explains. A couple of months ago, a A court ruled that Xu Guang was guilty of "stirring fights and trouble," a common charge in China used to silence dissent, which can carry a sentence of up to five years.
While even in Hong Kong it is no longer possible to mention aloud anything related to that June 4, 1989, in some thirty cities around the world various events were held on Sunday in memory of the Tiananmen repression. Even in New York, in the center of Manhattan, several figures who participated in the student movement have inaugurated a museum full of photos, videos, press clippings and banners from those days.
The presentation of the museum was made by Wang Dan, who spent almost a decade in a prison in China before being able to flee to the United States: "The events of 1989 are linked to the past, but also to the present and the future. We must commemorate those who sacrificed their lives and remember the democratic dreams of the Chinese people".
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
