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On Thursday (June 2), police in Hong Kong were reported to have warned people not to organize or participate in any “unlawful assemblies” to commemorate the crackdown on protesters at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square by Chinese forces 33 years ago.
Since 1990, tens of thousands of residents have gathered after sunset at Hong Kong’s Victoria Park on June 4 for a candlelight vigil. For the past two years, however, Hong Kong police have banned vigils by citing Covid-19 restrictions, which critics argued were being misused by authorities.
Despite the ban and presence of security forces, hundreds of people still gathered around Victoria Park in 2021, international news media reported.
On May 19, the Catholic diocese of Hong Kong announced that for the first time in 33 years, it would not conduct the annual memorial mass for the victims of the Tiananmen massacre of 1989. Yet, the Ward Memorial Methodist Church in the neighborhood Yau Ma Tei held a prayer meeting, a week after the Catholic church’s announcement, The South China Morning Post reported.
The decision to cancel mass came after the arrest of the 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former bishop of Hong Kong. Zen, along with three others, who ran a charity that provides legal aid to pro-democracy protesters, were arrested on charges of “collusion with foreign powers” under the National Security Law imposed by Beijing. The cardinal was later released on bail.
During the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, who served as paramount leader from 1978 to 1992, China had introduced a series of economic reforms. Liberalization had brought tremendous economic growth; however, it was accompanied by high inflation and increased corruption among government officials.
Student-led protests in major cities had accompanied these changes in the mid 1980s, with the demand of greater political freedom. The movement crystallized in the spring of 1989, with the death of the former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Hu Yaobang, who was seen as supportive of democratic reforms.
On the day of Hu’s funeral on April 22, thousands of students occupied Tiananmen Square, the historic square in the heart of Beijing, seeking greater political freedoms. In the subsequent weeks, an estimated 1 million demonstrators joined them, transforming the gathering into a mass movement. Similar protests took place in other major cities such as Shanghai, Xi’an and Chengdu.
While some members of the Chinese Communist Party wanted to negotiate with the protesters and grant concessions, the hardline faction led by Premier Li Peng overruled them and introduced martial law in Beijing in the last two weeks of May 1989.
On June 3-4, troops and tanks proceeded to Tiananmen Square, opening fire at or crushing unarmed protesters who stood in their way. The extent of the violence is not fully known. The Chinese government has claimed that 241 people were killed and 7,000 injured. According to UK documents released in 2017, some 10,000 people were killed. Previous estimates of deaths in the protests had varied from hundreds to upwards of 1,000, according to a report in the BBC.
Censorship by the Chinese government
The Chinese government exercises tight control over any discussions about the events on June 4.
According to a 2009 report by Human Rights Watch, Chinese citizens who dispute the official version face stringent action from security forces. The Chinese media is not allowed to publish narratives about the 1989 protests that contradict the official version.
China also regularly removes reference to the events from the Internet to the extent that it is able to, and search engines in the country block any photographs and keywords like “Tiananmen Square” and “June 4”. Users in China searching for these events are forced to use alternative phrases, which are regularly filtered out as well. As a result of the mass censorship, entire generations in China have grown up without knowing anything about what happened in their country at that time.
Beijing seldom acknowledges the events on June 4, and when it does the government’s crackdown of the movement is justified. In June 2019, during the Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore, the Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe described the Tiananmen demonstrations as “political turmoil that the central government needed to quell”. He added, “The government was decisive in stopping the turbulence, that was the correct policy.”
Commemorations in Hong Kong
Unlike mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao were until recently the only places in the country where people could legally hold commemorations. Until 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony and not under the jurisdiction of China. Even after it was transferred and became a special administrative region of China, Hong Kong still possessed some autonomy, which allowed it to continue the vigil.
Residents of Hong Kong had also been close allies of the demonstrators in 1989. Many of the dissidents who had participated in the Tiananmen Square protests avoided arrest through the assistance of supporters in Hong Kong. Operation Yellowbird, a group of underground operatives in the city, helped smuggle hundreds of dissidents into Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements, the pro-democracy group that has organised the vigil at Victoria Park over the years, also shares ties with the 1989 protests in mainland China.
The organisation was founded in May 1989 to extend support for the movement that was taking place in Tiananmen Square. It has sought to keep the memory of the events alive and to “build a democratic China”. The group was also at the forefront of the democracy movement in Hong Kong, but disbanded in September 2021 after facing national security charges.
In March 2019, mass protests erupted in Hong Kong after the government introduced a bill to allow the extradition of people charged with specific crimes to mainland China. While it was withdrawn in September, the movement continued to swell, with demands for full democracy and an inquiry into the alleged police brutality.
On June 30, 2020, an extensive national security law was brought in Hong Kong which criminalised a range of dissident activities. Many protesters, including leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance, have been prosecuted under these laws. Memorialisation of June 4 has also been suppressed using this law.
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In December 2021, the “Pillar of Shame”, an iconic sculpture portraying the dismembered and mangled bodies of the victims of Tiananmen Square, was removed from the University of Hong Kong.
This week, students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have been hiding miniatures of the statue, “Goddess of Democracy” around the campus, in memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The statue made of foam and papier mache was first erected in 1989, but destroyed by Chinese forces. A bronze version had been located in the university in 2010, but it was removed by officials in December last year.
