Thousands of Hong Kong
protesters defied a police ban Thursday night to stage an annual vigil on the
anniversary of June 4, 1989 — the date that Chinese tanks rolled into Beijing’s
Tiananmen Square to crush a student-led democracy movement.
For the past three decades,
semiautonomous Hong Kong has been the only place on Chinese soil allowed to
openly hold a mass memorial. But in an unprecedented move that spurred
criticism, the government canceled this year’s event, citing the coronavirus
outbreak and the need for social distancing.
Just hours before activists
started filtering into Victoria Park anyways, risking fines and arrest, Hong
Kong’s legislature criminalized insulting China’s national anthem. Anyone found
guilty of mocking the “March of the Volunteers” can face up to three years in
prison and a fine of up to 50,000 Hong Kong dollars ($6,450).
Opponents perceive the bill
as an infringement on the city’s freedom of speech and see in its passage the
further erosion of the civil liberties the set Hong Kong apart from the rest of
China.
Tensions are already running
high after Beijing’s recent moves to tame anti-government protests that
paralyzed the Chinese-ruled city for the second half of 2019.
Fresh protests broke out at
the end of May after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced plans to
impose a national security law targeting acts of subversion and secession. It
will most likely be wielded against anti-government protesters, but it has also
raised questions over how long Beijing will be willing to tolerate dissent in
the wayward enclave, including the commemoration of sensitive historic
anniversaries.
In Victoria Park on Thursday
night, protesters made their anger and frustrations apparent as they attempted
to dismantle the warren of metal barricades and police tape. Others waved the
protest flag calling for the “revolution of our times.”
A retired school teacher who
asked to be identified only by his surname Yeung due to safety reasons called
the national anthem bill “a direct restriction [of] our freedoms.”
The 65-year-old says he has
observed the Tiananmen anniversary every year since 1989, when he watched it
happened on the television. “It’s my duty,” he says. “I have to stand up, speak
out.”
More than 3,000 riot officers
were deployed to enforce the vigil ban, according to local media reports. Soon
after people began convening in the park, a loudspeaker warned them they could
face prosecution for assembling there.
The Hong Kong Alliance in
Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, the group that organizes
the annual vigil, called on people around the city to light a candle at 8 p.m.
and to observe a moment of silence at 8:09 p.m. from any location.
Lee Cheuk-yan, chair of the
alliance, tells TIME he believes political motives were behind the decision to
ban the event since locally transmitted coronavirus cases have dwindled.
“If they are so afraid of the
virus, if they think the virus is so dangerous to public health, how come they
have allowed schools to open?” he says.
While bars, beaches, schools
and churches have been allowed to resume operations, the government on Tuesday
extended a ban on gatherings of more than eight people for another two weeks.
It also extended compulsory quarantine measures for residents arriving from
outside Hong Kong.
When police rejected an
application to hold this year’s vigil, saying the event would pose a “major
threat to public health,” veteran democracy campaigners were alarmed. Some took
it as further evidence of Beijing imposing tighter control.
“The June 4 vigil has always
been a political irritant to Beijing,” says Andrew J. Nathan, a professor of
political science at Columbia University, who co-edited the book The Tiananmen
Papers. “Now that Beijing is intensifying control of Hong Kong, it has the
opportunity to put an end to this commemoration on Chinese soil of resistance
to authoritarianism.”
A symbol of Hong Kong’s
autonomy
Hong Kong has long been the
main site to publicly commemorate the bloodshed at Tiananmen. Though the
official death toll is unknown it is widely believed that hundreds if not
thousands were killed.
The anniversary remains a
taboo subject on the mainland. An official investigation was never held, and
the few who attempt to commemorate it are imprisoned. Even internet searches
for any related terms—like the date it happened—are blocked by China’s
censorship apparatus.
But in Hong Kong, the event
draws huge, somber crowds. More than 180,000 were estimated to have gathered in
Victoria Park last year. Religious leaders, pro-democracy activists, witnesses
and relatives of those killed typically give speeches on the hardcourt soccer
field. Unlike the violent clashes between police and protesters that have
flared over the last year, the vigil is known to be a peaceful event. Attendees
last year stuck around after to collect the garbage and scrape up candle wax.
To Hong Kong’s veteran
democracy campaigners, commemorating the Tiananmen crackdown offers a way to
visibly demonstrate Hong Kong’s autonomy, and prove its continued exemption
from the communist government’s censorship.
The former British colony was
reunified with China in 1997, eight years after the Tiananmen bloodshed. But
the handover treaty settling the territory’s future had already been inked long
before the military crackdown. The images of soldiers suppressing a nascent
democracy movement many Hongkongers had actively supported did not bode well
for the city’s own aspirations of universal suffrage.
“In 1989 [Hong Kongers] were
traumatized by the Beijing massacre; and they cannot forget about it,”
Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political science professor at Hong Kong Baptist
University, tells TIME. “The vigil has been part of the Hong Kongers DNA since
then, a way to reaffirm Hong Kong identity, distinctiveness, political freedom
and autonomy.”
But in recent years, some
younger Hong Kongers have shied away from the vigil, saying it is too focused
on the past. Others split over the organizing group’s goal to build “a
democratic China,” calling it not progressive enough. Many activists want greater
democratic freedoms in the territory, and increasingly are calling for
independence in Hong Kong as a way to express their hostility toward Beijing,
even though most do not think it is feasible.
But on Thursday night, the
ban on the vigil and the passage of the national anthem law galvanized some
young supporters to come to the park.
“I came because of the recent
[protest] movement,” says Rico a 22-year-old university student who gave a
pseudonym. He says this is only his second vigil, after he joined an anniversary
four or five years ago.
“We’re gathering tonight to
show people how much we don’t like the CCP and [to] remind people in the world
what the CCP did 31 years ago and what China is doing to Hong Kong now,” he
says.
Worries for the future
Many fear that the impending
national security legislation will make commemorating the Tiananmen anniversary
too dangerous next year. Although the law is aimed at outlawing acts like
secession, subversion and terrorism, such charges are regularly used on the
mainland to stifle dissent.
“In future years, even if
there’s no public health rationale for banning the commemoration, I anticipate
that the authorities will find other justifications,” says Nathan, the
professor at Columbia University.
“Beijing’s new national
security law for Hong Kong looks likely to provide a legal foundation for such
future bans,” he says.
Former Chief Executive CY
Leung acknowledged in an interview last month that the annual vigil and its
organizer could both fall afoul of the new national security law, depending on
how the legislation is written by Beijing.
Protesters in Victoria Park
were not optimistic. “This is probably the last June 4 gathering that Hong Kong
will have, maybe the last one ever in China,” says Rico.
In Macau, the only other
place within China allowed to commemorate the Tiananmen anniversary,
authorities also banned this year’s vigil due to concerns over COVID-19,
although there have not been any new confirmed cases in the gambling mecca for
almost two months. Approval was also revoked for Macau’s annual, open-air photo
exhibition on the massacre.
“The problem is, like in
1989, we are facing the same brutal regime,” says Lee, the Hong Kong vigil
organizer.
Despite this year’s ban on
the gathering, some Hongkongers still found other ways to mark the anniversary.
Candles were lit in apartment windows, while smaller events, like readings and
church services, were planned across the city.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom,
historian and author of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink, told TIME that it is
possible to imagine a future for the city in which there are no more officially
approved large-scale vigils on June 4.
“If that happens, some people
will surely find creative ways to keep the tradition of commemoration alive,”
he says, “but in subtler ways than a big gathering at Victoria Park.”
Yet this year, even with the
event technically banned, thousands of flickering candles once again
illuminated faces young and old in Victoria Park. During the moment of
mourning, they all fell silent. There was not a police officer in sight.
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