(Beijing) China was preparing on Saturday to live without any public commemoration the anniversary of the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, especially in Hong Kong where the police warned that any gathering would be illegal.
Posted yesterday at 10:40 p.m.
For 33 years, Beijing has done everything possible to erase Tiananmen from collective memory. History textbooks do not mention it. Online discussions on this subject are systematically censored.
On June 4, 1989, the communist regime sent tanks and troops to quell peaceful protesters who had for weeks occupied iconic Tiananmen Square demanding political change and an end to systemic corruption.
The crushing of the movement had killed hundreds, more than a thousand according to some estimates.
Security was reinforced on Saturday around this square in the capital, AFP noted.
In China, evoking the events of 1989 has always been taboo. Hong Kong was an exception until 2020, when Beijing imposed a draconian national security law on the semi-autonomous region designed to stifle dissent after massive pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Since then, the local authorities have been trying to erase all traces of the memory of Tiananmen.
illegal vigil
Hong Kong police have warned that any commemorative gatherings will be illegal. Particularly in the large Victoria Park, where a candlelight vigil once brought together tens of thousands of people on June 4.
Much of this park was closed as of Friday evening, and many officers were patrolling the site Saturday morning.
In the bustling shopping district of nearby Causeway Bay on Friday, a street performer who had carved a potato into the shape of a candle and held a lighter to it was taken to a police van, observed an AFP journalist.
The man, Chan Mei-tung, was one of three performers performing street performances on Friday with a roundabout reference to Tiananmen.
One of them thus invited passers-by to take up a “mathematical challenge” whose solution was the number 8964, a reference to the date of June 4, 1989. Another, Sanmu Chan, presented an abstract piece which highlighted scene a candle frozen in a small block of ice.
All were watched by the police, who recalled that “participating in an unauthorized assembly” was punishable by five years in prison.
Vigils had already been banned in 2020 and 2021 in the name of the fight against COVID-19. Last year, the Hong Kong Alliance, which organized them, was dissolved, its June 4 Museum was closed and its leaders arrested.
fasting in prison
Former Alliance leader Lee Cheuk-yan announced he would fast, light a match and sing memorial songs on Saturday in his prison cell.
“I believe Hong Kongers will join me in marking June 4 in all sincerity, using their own means to express their commitment to democracy,” Lee wrote in a letter posted online.
Another former member of the Alliance, Leung Kam-wai, explained to AFP that the authorities deliberately incite self-censorship by remaining vague on what is legal or not.
“I hope those who still want to commemorate will find their own way to do so,” said Mr. Leung, saying that “it doesn’t have to happen in the park” and “the most important thing is that we continue to commemorate.
This lack of clarity of the red lines has prompted six Hong Kong universities in recent months to unbolt Tiananmen memorials erected on their campuses.
And one of the last ways Hong Kongers remember Tiananmen, the annual Catholic masses, were canceled this year, again for fear of prosecution.
Commemorating Tiananmen in public is now only legal overseas. Dissidents in exile have created their own museums in the United States. And activists plan to resurrect in Taiwan the “Pillar of Shame”, one of the sculptures recently torn down in Hong Kong.
“The possibility of commemorating the June 4 massacre has deteriorated drastically in Hong Kong,” Kasey Wong, an artist exiled from Taiwan, told AFP at an exhibition in Taipei.
“Coming to Taiwan and having the opportunity to be human again, to express our concern, to mourn the dead, is a privilege,” he added.
Outside China, vigils are planned for Saturday in several countries. Amnesty International coordinates around twenty of them “to seek justice and as a sign of solidarity with Hong Kong”.