#tiananmen vigil

[panicinthestudio]

Why Hongkongers remember China's Tiananmen crackdown, June 3, 2019

Three decades have passed since the Tiananmen Square crackdown, but many people in Hong Kong still vividly recall joining a “million-strong” march in the city to support the student movement in Beijing. To Hongkongers who have been fighting since 1989 for a vindication of the June 4 movement, letting go of their memories is not an option. South China Morning Post

For many of us too young to remember the images and news, the documents, media, eyewitness accounts, and the international reactions are what are left to us of the protestors and the spirit of their idealism.

We took for granted that there was a physical time and place in Hong Kong to remember them, and forgot that it was a space that we actively renew in ourselves and our collective memory. The candles may not light Victoria Park anymore but they also are no longer confined there.

香港已经退居二线了，现在要轮到台湾值班。不要忘记！

With Hong Kong out of the picture, it's now up to Taiwan to take up the torch.

[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.

[dialogue-queered]

4 June 2024 Extract: Chinese and Hong Kong exiles joined activists in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere to remember the events of June 1989.

More than 2,000 people attended a vigil in Toronto, including the city’s mayor. A vigil was also organised on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, while a series of events including public discussions, an exhibition and play have taken place in London.

Campaign group Hong Kong Watch stressed it was important that June 4 be remembered.

“Those who live in freedom must uphold our responsibility to make sure that 4 June 1989 is never forgotten,” said the group’s founder and chief executive, Benedict Rogers. “We must ensure that candles are lit and memories rekindled in every corner of the world in honour of the courage and sacrifice of those who protested in 1989. The truth must not be erased.”

[like-i-need-a-hole-in-my-head]

“The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" -Dick The Butcher (William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2)

Three organizers of Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen vigil, including a barrister, have been convicted under the National Security Law for failing to give police information on members of the group and other data.

The key issue is that the police issued the demand for data on the basis that the organizers were colluding with foreign forces (which is a specific crime). The police refused to disclose the evidence they had to consider the organizers a foreign agent. The judge agreed that it wasn’t necessary and that we could assume the police were acting in good faith.

Chow Hang-tung, who has been in custody since September 2021 awaiting trial on other national security issues, gave a brilliant statement:

More information

[roboe1]

In The News Today: 5/28/2024.

She’s EXPOSING The Globalist Illegal Immigration Agenda Naomi Wolf on mass illegal immigration. Hong Kong arrests Chow Hang-tun and others under new security law | Radio Free Asia (RFA) Hong Kong police arrest six people for ‘seditious’ Facebook posts. Tiananmen vigil organizer Chow Hang-tung is among the arrestees, the first under the Article 23 security law. What Do You Notice About The…

[feelmir]

Belgrade acting Mayor Alexandar Sapic qualified the riots as Maidanisation” and the prime minister Prime Minister Ana Brnabic thanked the Russian security services for information about the impending colour revolution, well proven old technique going back to the aftermath of the WWII implemented by the CIA helped by the spy networks of former Nazi, Reinhard Gehlen serving as model for Georges Soros whose main mission determined by the Truman Doctrine, aimed at destabilizing and destroying the then new socialist eastern bloc. It is nt the first time a colour revolution takes place in Serbia.For the 2000 election, the opposition rallied behind Vojislav Kootunica and vigilant election monitoring and exit polling suggested that he had taken more than half of the vote in a five-man race. When official results did not tally, 10 days of protests followed. Behind the colour revolution that toppled Milosovic was the neo nazi group OPTOR which inspired Ukraine’s nazi groups that toppled Yanukovich’s government. lessons from previous protests, the color revolution phenomenon has some innovative features that are common to all the campaigns mentioned here. Immediately remarkable is that the majority of mass demonstrations have occurred during the course of an election. Elections are considered propitious occasions to inspire protesters, partially because they sometimes provide a rare opportunity to mobilize and protest with relative impunity as international observers are usually present. Elections provide a chance for a disenchanted population to offer a judgment, and when that right is taken from the electorate through vote rigging or other forms of manipulation, these transgressions can provide further stimuli for action. Another common element has been the total lack, at least in theory, of violent actions initiated by anti-regime agitators.

The first colour revolution fomented by the CIA and Gehlen spy networks took place in the nascent DDR in 1953. It is therefore false to date the origins of the colour revolution to the period following the breakup of the Soviet Union, as if there is no hidden action of the CIA and the collective West In March of 1946, British politician Winston Churchill was already redefining the new spheres of inluence and began to speak of the ‘iron curtain that [had] descended across the continent’, drawing a line ‘from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic’. The anti communist crusade led by the Western powers had begun. The firs colour revolution fomented by capitalist west took place in East Germany, 1953; Poland, 1956, 1970, Hungary 1956, Prague, 1968, Warsaw 1980, Paris, 1968, Tiananmen, 1989, Czechoslovakia in the autumn of 1989. On August 23, 1989, when two million people linked hands in a continuous chain from Vilnius in Lithuania through Latvia and on to the Estonian capital, Tallinn, in what was known as the “Baltic Chain.” In 1991 a general strike, gathering workers and students in Kiev, Ukraine, led to the resignation of Prime Minister Maso. Slovakia in 1998, Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, and Kyrgyzstan in 2005, failed color revolutions, including Belarus in 2003 and 2006, and Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in 2005, Uzbekistan in 2005, Nepal in 2006, and Burma in 2007,

[jhavelikes]

Mr Lai was born in Guangzhou in southern China in 1947 to a wealthy family, which lost everything when the communists took power. He fled China when he was just 12 and entered Hong Kong as a stowaway on a boat. He started working in a garment sweatshop. He taught himself English and eventually founded the international clothing brand Giordano. After tanks crushed pro-democracy protests in Beijing in 1989, Mr Lai's career veered towards political activism and media. In 2021, he was handed his first jail sentence in Hong Kong - 13 months - for participating in a banned vigil for the Tiananmen Square massacre. Some of the most serious charges Mr Lai is facing now centre on Apple Daily, which he founded in 1995. The Chinese-language tabloid had been staunchly critical of Beijing and at one point called for international sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials. The newspaper shut in June 2021, after police froze $2.3m (£1.8m) of its assets, raided its offices and arrested some of its top editors. HongKongers mourned the closure of what was seen as the city's last independent newspaper. Six former Apple Daily executives were arrested along with Mr Lai. They were accused of "colluding with foreign forces" to endanger national security, and have since pleaded guilty. Human Rights Watch has condemned Mr Lai's trial as a "travesty".

Jimmy Lai: Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon's trial begins

[douguru]

Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen Square candlelight vigil is under threat from China

[panicinthestudio]

Further reading:

HKFP: Explainer: How, and why, the gov’t banned protest song ‘Glory to Hong Kong’, May 17, 2024

[odyssej]

Funny to be on this American-centric social platform and hearing news of the shit that goes down over there while on our end the more pressing issues are…

Really does seem to be two worlds apart, huh, as a museum dedicated to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre has just opened in the Big Apple, yet we couldn’t even hold our yearly vigil here as a pro-CCP carnival’s taken over.

Priorities, man.

[qudachuk]

Annual vigil replaced by pro-Beijing carnival but some still manage to mark massacre amid heavy police presenceFor the past three years, Hong Kong authorities have gone to great lengths to stop people from lighting candles in Victoria Park and...

[dialogue-queered]

Comment: Memorialising the Tiananmen massacre, 4 June 1989.

Extract 1: The opening of the June 4th Memorial Museum in New York was prompted by the closure of one in Hong Kong in 2021 after the imposition of the national security law effectively criminalised 4 June commemorations. But now people who try to light a candle much further from Beijing also encounter difficulties. When plans for the New York museum were announced last year, local Chinese community groups objected to them, accusing the organisers of being divisive.

Extract 2: In the past two years, Hongkongers have swelled the numbers at the London vigil. But attendees are often cautious, reluctant to remove their face masks or trust other people there.

“There are people who take photos at events that are critical of the CCP, including 4 June vigils,” said Yaqiu Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It’s never clear who those people are, but likely they are associated with the CCP, and taking photos is a way of intimidating participants. That is also a big reason why overseas students refrain from going to those events.”

[globalnewss]

Dozens arrested in Hong Kong on Tiananmen crackdown anniversary | Politics News

Police in Hong Kong have detained dozens of people on charges of “breaching public peace”, including a woman carrying a bouquet of flowers and a man who held a candle, during a crackdown on commemorations of the anniversary of the bloodshed in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Restrictions in Hong Kong have stifled what were once the largest vigils marking the anniversary of the bloody crackdown by…