HONG KONG: As the 35th anniversary of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square assault neared, Rowena He, a notable professor of that terrible section of current China’s past, was busy flying between the United States, Britain and Canada to provide a series of talks. Each was intended to advocate for those who could n’t. The 1989 assault, in which authorities soldiers opened fire on pupil- led pro- politics protesters, resulting in hundreds, if no thousands, dying, remains a taboo subject in mainland China. The large June 4 annual celebration in Hong Kong, which was once a beacon of commemorative independence, has vanished, a direct result of the city’s crackdown on dissidents following large anti-government protests in 2019.
After Hong Kong authorities last year rejected her visa renewal, which was widely believed to be a sign of the financial hub’s decline in intellectual freedom, he was still reeling from the loss of her academic position. The former protester in Guangzhou, southern China, saw this as her duty despite the exhausting schedule of discussions.
” Hong Kong’s citizens are no longer able to light the candles.” So we would light it everywhere, globally”, she said.
Since Beijing’s toughened political stance effectively ended any large-scale commemorations within its borders, international commemorative events have become more important for preserving the memories of the Tiananmen crackdown. Over the past few years, a growing number of talks, rallies, exhibitions and plays on the subject have emerged in the U. S., Britain, Canada, Australia and Taiwan.
These actions promote optimism and counteract the aggressive efforts to remove reminders of the crackdown, particularly those seen in Hong Kong. Under a 2020 broad national security law, which has almost eradicated public dissent, the city’s police in 2021 charged three of the organization’s leaders with subversion. Later, the group voted to disband. Tiananmen- related statues were also removed from universities.
Seven people were detained last week in Hong Kong on suspicion of alleged sedition for posting social media content about the Tiananmen crackdown in accordance with a new, home-grown security law. A Christian newspaper, which typically publishes content related to the event ahead of its anniversary, left its front page mostly blank. To address the current situation, it claimed that it could only use words as blank squares and white space.
A carnival featuring pro-Beijing organizations will take place on Tuesday in the park where the vigil was held.
In the years following tanks rolled into the heart of Beijing to end weeks of student-led protests that had spread to other cities and were perceived as a threat to Communist Party rule, attempts to silence commemorative efforts have failed to erase the harrowing memories from the minds of a generation of liberal-minded Chinese.
He recalls that protesters like her took to the streets because they lacked respect for their country when he was 17 years old. When the crackdown happened, she spent the entire night in front of her TV, unable to sleep. In order to pass her exams, she was required to recite the official narrative that the government had successfully stoked a riot after returning to school.
” I never killed anyone. But I lived with that survivor’s guilt all those years”, she said.
A museum in New York opened last June to preserve the memories of the incident in order to preserve the events surrounding the Tiananmen crackdown. It has exhibits like a tent used by student protesters and a shirt that has blood on it.
In Hong Kong, a similar museum that was run by vigil organizers was shut down in 2021.
As of early May, its board chair Wang Dan, also a leading former student leader of the Tiananmen protests, estimated the New York museum attracted about 1, 000 people, including Chinese immigrants, U. S. citizens and Hong Kongers. Wang said he plans to hold temporary exhibitions on university campuses in the U.S. and possibly in other countries over the long term in order to expand its audience.
Because mainland Chinese and Hong Kongers can view overseas memorial events online, he said, are overseas memorial events crucial.
Because young people there all know how to use VPNs to circumvent internet censorship, he said,” It can have an effect in mainland China.”
According to Aline Sierp, a professor of European history and memory studies at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, overseas commemorative activities allow the memories to travel and remain so that future generations can access them.
However, she noted that adapting the memories to new locations could lead to future fragmentation or de-contextualization.
According to Alison Landsberg, a memory studies professor at George Mason University in Virginia, efforts to inspire people from other countries who are facing their own difficulties in the struggle for democracy have the potential to be powerful.
Film and television dramas can be powerful tools for people to use their memories of events they did n’t experience, she said.
She claimed that overseas theater productions about the crackdown, which started last year in Taiwan and continued this year in London, have a better chance of making those connections and possibly reaching a broader audience.
When you have a dramatic narrative, you can entice the audience in a certain intimate way, said Landsberg.
Last week, members of an audience at a London theater were visibly moved, some to tears, after watching the play” May 35th”, a title that subtly references the June 4 crackdown.
The play, which was produced by Lit Ming- wai, a member of the Hong Kong diaspora who immigrated to the United Kingdom after the passage of the 2020 security law, tells the tale of an elderly couple who wishes to properly mourn their son who passed away in 1989.
Its director, Kim Pearce, who was born in the U. K. in the 1980s, said the tragedy had resonated with her from a young age and she was once moved to tears when she read the poem” Tiananmen” by James Fenton. Working on this project, she said, has further deepened her connection to the stories.
British theater- goer Sue Thomas, 64, also found the play deeply moving. She said,” Particularly as a parent myself now, which I was n’t then, which kind of made me think about it in a much more heartfelt way.”
At the theater, He, the scholar, served as one of the post- show speakers, sharing her struggles and the motivations behind her work with the audience. She claimed that the play’s power caused her to relive the trauma of the previous 35 years, bringing her to tears and causing her to lose her contact lenses.
She said,” It shows how much suffering people have endured for all these years.” If there is anything we can do, I hope to educate the younger generation about this.
