Opinion | Remembering June 4 dead has a place in Hong Kong’s fight for democracy
Gary Cheung says while understandable, Hong Kong students’ desire to dissociate themselves from the drive for national progress is illogical
In his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Czech writer Milan Kundera wrote that “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. Since the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on pro-democracy protesters on June 4, 1989, Beijing has used all methods to stop mainlanders from mentioning the tragic event in the public domain while frowning on the activities in Hong Kong to commemorate the incident.
At a private meeting with veteran pro-democracy activist Szeto Wah in 1997, then chief executive Tung Chee-hwa asked the then chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movements of China to drop the “June 4 baggage”. Tung told Szeto the following year not to organise events to commemorate the crackdown. Tung’s efforts were in vain: the turnout for the annual candlelight vigil in Victoria Park reached a record of more than 180,000 in 2014, according to the organisers.
What Tung failed to achieve is now being delivered by the city’s student leaders. Representatives of student unions from 11 tertiary institutions have decided to organise a forum on Saturday to discuss the significance of June 4, but there will be no session to mourn those killed. The University of Hong Kong student union will organise another forum on the same day but the theme will be the future of Hong Kong.
Alternative June 4 vigil will include forum on Hong Kong’s future
Advocating independence with a locked mindset
HKU student union president Althea Suen Hiu-nam argued last week that a line should be drawn under mourning those killed in 1989 as the commemorative activities had made no headway. She said the alliance’s slogan of “building a democratic China” was a “utopian goal” that was impossible to achieve, and wasting efforts on it would only impede Hong Kong’s democratic development.
Student leaders’ rejection of the goal of “building a democratic China” can be attributed to their frustration with the mainland authorities in the wake of the Occupy protests. They are trying to grapple with the localist movement while rejecting the Hong Kong-mainland bond. This sense of alienation from the mainland is prevalent among a substantial number of young people here.
Turnout plunges by half as Hongkongers march to remember June 4 Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy
While their frustration is understandable, I am not convinced by their flawed logic that the goal of building a democratic China and mourning those who died for the betterment of the country are at odds with fighting for democracy in Hong Kong. They fail to recognise that Hongkongers’ support for the pro-democracy movement on the mainland has contributed to the development of civil society in Hong Kong.