Tiananmen Tales: Hong Kong’s memories risk Chinese erasure

As Chinese communities around the world mark the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on Sunday, many overseas Chinese, including those from Hong Kong, are expected to attend one of the numerous vigils set to take place in different parts of the world. However, in Hong Kong itself, where the tradition originated more than three decades ago, there will be no public event commemorating those who lost their lives in 1989. Meanwhile, authorities in the former British colony are also removing references to the bloody crackdown on the student-led protest. In recent weeks, Hong Kong journalists found that dozens of books and documentaries related to the Tiananmen Square Massacre were missing from the city’s public library database. Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee defended the decision to remove certain books from public libraries, arguing that the books on the library shelves amounted to recommendations by the authorities.

“We must not recommend any books that are unlawful, that violate copyrights, that contain unhealthy ideas, [and] the government is obliged not to recommend books with unhealthy ideas,” he said last month at a news conference. In addition to the removal of books, the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong announced last month that for the second year in a row, it will not be organizing a commemorative Mass. Last year, some members of the Catholic church expressed concerns about violating the controversial National Security Law (NSL) by organizing a Mass dedicated to Tiananmen Square victims. Experts told DW that these efforts to erase memories or references related to the Tiananmen Square Massacre reflect the Chinese government’s long history of erasing narratives that it doesn’t like and changing historical events to its advantage.

“It is not content with just erasing public commemoration of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but it aims to change how people remember that period of time in Hong Kong and the rest of China,” said Maya Wang, the associate director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch (HRW). For more than three decades, Hong Kong has been the home of one of the largest vigils commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre, with analysts pointing to a desire to not repeat the tragedy of the past as a reason for keeping its memory alive.

“People in Hong Kong used to consider having democracy as the best way to safeguard their own way of life in the face of the communist regime,” said Eric Lai, a visiting researcher at The Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London. Against this backdrop, Lai said the tradition of commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre reflects Hong Kong people’s deeply rooted grievances and dissatisfaction towards the Chinese government.

But since the Chinese government imposed the NSL in Hong Kong in 2020, the vigil and almost all public events commemorating the tragic event have disappeared, as authorities used COVID-19 control measures and the NSL to wipe out all forms of public gathering related to the commemoration on June 4.

In addition to the disappearance of public commemorative events, key leaders behind the Tiananmen vigil have all been arrested, detained, and sentenced under national security-related charges. Chow Hang-Tung, Lee Cheuk-Yan, and Albert Ho, who are all founding members of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance, the main organization that oversaw organizing the Tiananmen vigil, have all been in jail for more than a year.