For decades, Hong Kong was the only place in China where the victims of the 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy activists at Tiananmen Square in Beijing could be publicly mourned in a candlelight vigil. This year, Hong Kong is notable for all the ways it is being made to forget the 1989 massacre.
In the days preceding the June 4 anniversary on Sunday, even small shops that displayed items alluding to the crackdown were closely monitored, receiving multiple visits from the police. Over the weekend, thousands of officers patrolled the streets in the Causeway Bay district, where the vigil was normally held. They arrested four people for committing “acts with seditious intention,” and detained four others.
Zhou Fengsuo, a student leader in the Tiananmen Square protest movement, said that Hong Kong is now under the same “despotic rule” as the mainland.
“Back in 1989, we did not realize the mission of a democratic China,” said Mr. Zhou, now the executive director of Human Rights in China, a New York advocacy group. “Afterward, Hong Kong protests faced the same suppression, the same vilification and erasure of memories.”
In 1989, the pro-democracy movement in China drew huge support from Hong Kong, then a British colony. After the Chinese military cleared student protesters occupying Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds and possibly thousands, some student leaders in Beijing were smuggled to safety via Hong Kong.
Every June 4 for three decades, Victoria Park in Hong Kong was where Tiananmen Mothers, a group representing victims of the massacre, could openly grieve and express hopes for a freer China. The gatherings drew huge crowds of tens of thousands of people, even as in the past decade some of the city’s younger generation of activists questioned the relevance of the mainland-focused movement as they embraced a distinct Hong Kong identity.
But since China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong in 2020, virtually all forms of dissent have been criminalized in the city. Pro-democracy and antigovernment protests like those that roiled the city in 2019 have been snuffed out.
The authorities have paid particular attention to commemorations of the Tiananmen massacre. They raided a museum dedicated to it, removed books about the crackdown from libraries, and imprisoned organizers of vigils.
In the past two years, the authorities cited pandemic restrictions to bar all public memorials of the crackdown. Those Covid restrictions were lifted this year, but instead of a Tiananmen vigil, Victoria Park was occupied by a trade fair. The fair was organized by pro-Beijing groups to celebrate the 1997 return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule, one month ahead of that anniversary.
The imprisonment of vigil organizers has raised the question of whether Hong Kong would ever allow residents to peacefully mourn the victims of the Tiananmen massacre.
Hong Kong’s chief executive, John Lee, has avoided providing a clear answer, saying only that “everybody…
2023-06-03 23:49:24
Link from www.nytimes.com