Authorities in China and Hong Kong are tightening control over civil society as people in more than a dozen cities around the world commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on Tuesday.
Ahead of the anniversary, Hong Kong authorities arrested eight people over social media posts commemorating June Fourth, which the police claim were aimed at using “an upcoming sensitive date” to incite hatred against the Hong Kong government and contained seditious intentions.
Most prominent among those arrested is human rights lawyer Chow Hang-tung, who has been detained since 2021 for organizing an annual Tiananmen Vigil in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park, which has been banned since Beijing imposed the controversial National Security Law on the former British colony in 2020.
Other individuals arrested by Hong Kong police include Chow’s mother and uncle and former members of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance, which used to organize the annual vigil and in which Chow served as vice chairwoman before its dissolution.
In addition to the eight people arrested for social media posts commemorating June Fourth, Hong Kong police detained performance artist Sanmu Chen Monday in the busy shopping district Causeway Bay, which was near Victoria Park.
Local media reports said Chen pretended to drink in front of a police van and write or draw in the air. This is the second year that Chen was detained by police on the eve of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Instead of the now-prohibited Tiananmen vigil, several pro-Beijing community organizations are holding a “food carnival” from June 1 to June 5 at Victoria Park, a move that some activists characterized as ironic.
In China, authorities sentenced former Tiananmen Student leader Xu Guang to four years in jail on April 3 for demanding that the Chinese government acknowledge the massacre and for holding a sign calling for government compensation in front of a local police station in May 2022.
Apart from Xu’s jail sentences, some family members of Tiananmen victims or former Tiananmen student leaders have also been put under strict police surveillance ahead of Tuesday’s anniversary, according to Human Rights Watch.
Chinese authorities have also censored a wide range of words, phrases, and even emojis due to their connection to the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Chinese activist Li Ying, who became a prominent source of news during China’s “white paper movement” in 2022, disclosed that Chinese authorities have banned the use of the candle emoji in China, which was commonly used for posts related to the Tiananmen Massacre.
Some analysts say the increased crackdown on civil society initiated by Hong Kong and Chinese authorities ahead of the Tiananmen anniversary reflects their attempt to remove memories related to the tragic event.
“The Hong Kong government is sending a message that June Fourth is a clear national security red line for Hong Kong and they want to make sure there is no commemoration or no memory of June Fourth in public,” Maya Wang, the interim China director at Human Rights Watch, told VOA by phone.
While the two national security laws that the Hong Kong government has implemented since 2020 have essentially outlawed public commemoration of June Fourth, Wang said some people in the city are still using veiled references to commemorate the event.
“June Fourth continues to be a collective memory among people in Hong Kong and you do see some of them make veiled references to the date by wearing black or through other gestures,” she said, adding that the effect of the authorities’ attempts to remove memories associated with June Fourth remains unclear.
A Christian newspaper in Hong Kong that used to release information about the Tiananmen vigils published an almost blank front page on Sunday as their response to the upcoming anniversary. Hong Kong’s Roman Catholic Cardinal Stephen Chow called for forgiveness and vaguely referenced the Tiananmen anniversary in an article he published.
Despite the lack of public commemoration in China and Hong Kong, several cities around the world, including Tokyo, Paris, London, New York, Boston, and Taipei, have each organized events to commemorate the event, which occurred when government troops fired on student-led pro-democracy protestors on June 4, causing what are thought to be thousands of deaths.
Zhou Fengsuo, a former Tiananmen student leader, told VOA that the dozens of commemorative events abroad play an important role in pushing back against the Chinese government’s efforts to erase memories related to the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
“When the Chinese government tries to intensify crackdowns on the commemoration of June Fourth, more people in the diaspora community feel compelled to help organize or participate in commemorations of the tragic event around the world,” he said in a phone interview.
Zhou has attended more than 20 Tiananmen commemorative events around the world this year and he said many events are organized or attended by young people or new immigrants from China.
“I met a lot of Chinese people at the June Fourth Memorial Museum in New York, and they are all actively participating in this year’s commemorative events,” he said.
As people around the world take part in commemorations of the Tiananmen Massacre, some activists say they remain hopeful that this decades-long tradition will be passed down to the next generation.
“I was encouraged to see a lot of young people, including Japanese people, take part in the June Fourth commemoration in Tokyo,” said Patrick Poon, a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo, adding that young people’s involvement in the event made him believe the tradition will be continued.
Through the efforts to organize commemorations of the Tiananmen Square Massacre around the world, Wang at Human Rights Watch said the Tiananmen anniversary is helping to strengthen linkages among different groups in the diaspora community that focus on pushing back against the Chinese government’s crackdown on civil society.
“Through these linkages, there is a growing solidarity of resistance on the state,” she told VOA.
