'A symbol of everything': Tiananmen vigils also for HK future
In Hong Kong, they will fast. In Melbourne and Sydney, they will light candles. In Beijing, you won’t hear about it. Thirty-one years on from the massacre that came to define modern China, the world is once again convulsing in protest and propaganda.
The Tiananmen Square vigils being held around the world on Thursday will symbolise more than the estimated 2600 killed as tanks and soldiers rolled through Beijing's on June 4 1989. The candles that light up homes and public squares are now as much about the future of Hong Kong and the memory of Dr Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who died after trying to warn the world about the coronavirus.
Chinese activist Wuyuan Dong Zoo, who goes by the name Horror, revealed her identity on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Credit:
Wuyuan Dong Zoo, an LGBTI activist from eastern China who now lives in Melbourne, told the world her real name for the first time on Thursday. "If I hide my identity now they would win," she said. Chinese police had paid her parents a visit on April 23 after she posted on social media under her pseudonym, Horror Zoo, and organised Hong Kong demonstrations in Melbourne as well as a memorial for Dr Li.
"The police said to me you are citizen of China so you are being watched by the Chinese government," she said. "You should love your country."
Zoo said her mother and father, a Chinese Communist Party scholar, were now under surveillance. "They tell my dad to go to the police station every week," she said. Pictures of Zoo on a video call with Chinese police seen by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age corroborate her account.
Zoo and 200 other Hong Kong and Chinese migrants will take to the steps of the State Library of Victoria on Thursday at 5.30pm. "This protest is not just about Tiananmen," she said. "Protest is a symbol of everything."
Dozens will join them at the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney. For the first time in three decades, there will be no public vigil in Hong Kong as the former British colony grapples with protests over new national security legislation imposed by Beijing and a coronavirus outbreak.
The decision to prevent the vigil drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the European Union on Thursday. "This commemoration is a signal that key freedoms continue to be protected," an EU spokeswoman said. The US, the United Kingdom and Australia are now among those weighing up offering refuge to those who may leave Hong Kong, just as their compatriots fled Beijing three decades ago.
In China, the day got the special treatment from the Chinese Communist Party's censors: email communications were restricted and any mention of Tiananmen Square or the date - June 4 - wiped by government filters.
The Chinese government maintains the military intervention three decades ago was necessary to end political turbulence. The unrest was driven by students calling for greater press freedom, more civil rights and tackling corruption. The government puts the official number of deaths at a tenth of the 2600 identified by China's Red Cross.
There were no statements, no TV packages and no public events on Thursday. Only one veiled reference was made by the Hu Xijin, the editor of the Communist Party's international mouthpiece The Global Times.
"The [Gross Domestic Product] of the mainland was slightly more than twice that of Taiwan in 1989, but today it’s 23 times. Do you feel upset and hopeless because of this change?," he responded to Taiwan's Presiden Tsai Ing-wen, the leader of one of the few countries in the Sinosphere that will publicly commemorate Tiananmen.
Injured protester in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Credit:AAP
The organisers of Hong Kong's vigil on Wednesday told participants to stay home and fast for one day. Those that could venture out would light candles at 8pm in commemoration of the June 4th massacre, Hong Kong's future and all those who have died in the global pandemic.
As of Thursday afternoon, many Hong Kongers had indicated that they still planned to march. More than 3000 riot police were mobilised to control the streets of Kowloon and Causeway Bay.
"I'm angry," said Jane Poon, who left Hong Kong in 2017 and organised the Tiananmen vigil through the Victorian Hong Konger Association. "We have a responsibility to talk about what happened in 1989 and also what is happening in Hong Kong."
In Melbourne, Victor, a public servant who asked only to use his first name over fears of his family's safety in Hong Kong, said the same regime that conducted the pro-democracy crackdown in Beijing in 1989 is still in power today, "but it is 100 times more powerful".
The 38-year old remembers wall-to-wall BBC coverage in Hong Kong of the tanks rolling into the square.
"A lot of mainland students who come to Australia don't know about it and they don’t want to know about it because they only read WeChat [Chinese social media] news," he said, adding it was not uncommon to be hassled by pro-Chinese Communist Party students in Melbourne.
"We feel it is our duty to put something out there. Even if they just Google it later, we have done our job."
Poon is worried about new laws proposed at the National People's Congress in Beijing that will help Hong Kong students "better learn Chinese history".
"They tried to wipe off Tiananmen from history and not allow the next generation to know about what happened in China," she said. "I believe the same thing will be happening in Hong Kong. They are already looking at our history books."
The Chinese embassy was contacted for comment.