#tiananmen square

[nevver]

May 35th

[saddayfordemocracy]

35 years of Tiananmen.

35 years since the Chinese government has wanted to erase this bloody repression from its history.

35 years later, the commemoration of Tiananmen remains BANNED in China and Hong Kong.

[myhamartiaishubris]

What's happening in China right now?

Huge huge huge disclaimer: I'm not a journalist or any kind of expert, but I want to talk about this.

China's been having a pretty politicized Covid policy that involves locking people inside their houses and a whole host of other things. On October 13, a giant banner was hung on Beijing's Sitong bridge criticizing the CCP's Covid policy, Xi Jingping's cult of personality, and the authoritarian regime as a whole. This, for a nation that had epitomized BF Skinner's learned helplessness model for 30 years, was huge.

More recently, China's Covid policy killed 10 people in Xinjiang by not letting firefighters in and not letting residents out. Now, students in Shanghai and Beijing are marching the streets with a blank page as their symbol in defiance of China's stringent censorship. People are even comparing this to the 1989 Tiananmen Square march.

Why I have hope

If you're not familiar with Chinese culture, it might not be hitting you just how huge this is. Students from places like Qinghua and Beida—essentially China's Ivy League—are leading this protest. This is the nation that has gotten used to tags on Weibo getting censored within hours of them going viral. This is the nation that is called “真怕死，真听话” (really afraid of dying, really obedient). But even a cornered rabbit has teeth, and the people of China are not rabbits. There is very real hope of change.

Why I'm afraid

This has happened before. 1989, Tiananmen Square. It was also students, 30 years ago. What we call the Tiananmen Square Massacre, they called the Tiananmen Square Clearing. Actually, they call it nothing at all. Because schools don't teach about it. No one talks about it. Hell, barely anyone outside of Beijing even knew about the Sitong Bridge incident. The people in China aren't stupid—but they are kept deliberately ignorant. And that's why—

Be loud

Here is one thing I am asking of you, even—no, especially—if you have no connection to China. I am afraid to be loud, because I have family in China. And the CCP already has a history of returning its people's violence tenfold. So if you have no stake in the game—be loud. Please. Let them know the whole world is watching. I know Twitter's a shitshow, but make them listen. Make them see that, if they pull out the tanks again, we will see, and we will remember. Make them afraid.

History isn't a circle, but a spiral—it repeats and repeats, but each time it tips a little further until eventually, something breaks.

EDIT 31/12/2022: As of recently (again, not a historian or journalist), China opened up restrictions all at once and now suddenly everyone has COVID. Also none of the pharmacies have fever medicine. Idk smells a little like reprisals to me.

[esoteric44ngel]

women sharing a kiss at tiananmen square (2006)

[masonjarhead]

From 15 April - 4 June, 1989, pro-democracy protests would take over China. After peaceful resolutions to the protests fell threw, the Chinese government would declare martial law and forcefully break up the protests. This brutal crackdown would lead to anywhere from 200 - 2,700 dead.

[agelessphotography]

Tiananmen Square, China, Alain Keler, 1989

[beardedmrbean]

[supersoftly]

Artist Sanmu Chan was stopped, questioned and taken away by police in Causeway Bay on Monday, the eve of the Tiananmen crackdown anniversary, as he sought to partake in some performance art.

A large police deployment had appeared near Victoria Park, a venue that once hosted mass remembrance vigils.

Dozens of uniform and plainclothes police officers were stationed across the shopping district, concentrated around East Point Road, Hennessy Road and Lockhart Road. An armoured police vehicle was briefly seen parked outside SOGO mall.

HKFP reporters witnessed Chan write the Chinese characters for “8964” with his finger in the air, referencing the date of the 1989 crackdown.

He also mimed pouring wine onto the ground to mourn the dead, per a Chinese tradition, before police moved in.

The Tiananmen crackdown occurred on June 4, 1989 ending months of student-led demonstrations in China. It is estimated that hundreds, perhaps thousands, died when the People’s Liberation Army cracked down on protesters in Beijing.

Over 30 police officers took Chan away for questioning and created a cordon to separate the artist from the media.

He was then taken away in a police vehicle a little before 9:30 pm, in a scene similar to his detention last June on the eve of the crackdown anniversary.

It is unclear if he was arrested. HKFP has reached out to the police for comment.

First anniversary since Article 23

Tuesday will mark the first Tiananmen crackdown anniversary since the city passed domestic security legislation, more commonly known as Article 23.

Police invoked the new law for the first time last week to arrest former Tiananmen vigil organiser Chow Hang-tung and six others over alleged sedition. They stand accused of using an “upcoming sensitive date” to incite hatred against the central and Hong Kong authorities through social media posts. Police made an eighth arrest in connection with the case on Monday. Hong Kong used to be one of the few places on Chinese soil where annual vigils were held to commemorate the people who died in the 1989 crackdown. But police banned the gathering at Victoria Park for the first time in 2020 citing Covid-19 restrictions, and imposed the same ban in the following year.

No official commemoration has been held since the vigil organiser, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, disbanded in September 2021. Currently occupying Victoria Park – historically the site of Hong Kong’s vigils – is a five-day patriotic carnival organised by 28 pro-Beijing groups.

[vinecine]

Never forget how China's government turned on its own people, 1989.

[federer7]

Tiananmen Square protests. Beijing. China. 1989

Photo: Stuart Franklin

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Fred Goldstein

Such flagrant appeals to colonialism have not been seen since the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in China in 1989. At that time, the vast assembly of counterrevolutionary student protesters, many of them schooled in the U.S., displayed a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square in an open appeal for support from U.S. imperialism.

Parading through Hong Kong with U.S. flags in 2019 is the equivalent of displaying the statue of “Lady Liberty” in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

[golden-letters]

@golden-letters

today marks 35 years since the tiananmen massacre.

i know news is one genocide after one war after one abuse of human rights. i know bringing up more sadness only brings more guilt, more grief, more hopelessness. but the young students who died and went "missing" 35 years ago, pleading for freedom, still haunts me.

today, in hong kong, a city insignificant to most, is spent in silence. a silence not everyone recognises. the silence born from the absence of candles remembering the dead youth, the absence of hymns sung for their mothers. it is another day on the news. another day at work. another day at school.

my mother said she spent today with an inexplicable sadness. the word she chose was 「悲傷」. sorrow. the kind that injures you. the kind that makes you feel pathetic, and so, so sad. she says it feels like home is gone, home is destroyed, and the ghosts don't know where to go anymore. 「悲慟」, she says this time. mournful. the kind that makes your heart wail and jerk and squirm.

and i cannot forget. i mustn't forget. i already left home and home is gone. but i mustn't forget.

[masterofd1saster]

Tiananmen Square 35th anniversary

Today, 3jun24 is the 35th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party crushing peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square.

Hundreds seems like a gross understatement.

[ernestbruce]

Tiananmen Square 1989: China massacres civilians

[panicinthestudio]

Further reading:

AFP, via HKFP: Hong Kong Christian newspaper runs blank front page ahead of Tiananmen crackdown anniversary, June 3, 2024

HKFP: Hong Kong’s Catholic Diocese axes third consecutive Tiananmen mass as cardinal urges ‘forgiveness’ over crackdown, June 4, 2024

HKFP: Ex-local councillor asked by police about Tiananmen crackdown anniversary plans; lawmakers say marking date in private is lawful, June 4, 2024

[beardedmrbean]