June 4 veteran offers advice to HK students: build bridges, not walls

A former student leader of the June 4 protest in Tiananmen Square has warned young Hongkongers that isolated political movements will fail.

Wang Dan, who now lives in Taiwan, made his comments after some university students said they would boycott the candlelight vigil at Victoria Park on Saturday because they disagreed with the organisers’ call to build a democratic China. The students also said the commemoration was not related to Hong Kong.

“I would like to urge them to spend more time learning from history,” Wang, 47, said.

Members of a political campaign “will not succeed when they draw a line restricting themselves from others, instead of garnering support from allies”, he said.

The vigil was not just a remembrance of the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989, when the ­democracy movement flowered before being crushed by the leadership; it was also a protest against Beijing, he said.

“In my view, deep inside the hearts of those who are at the helm of the leadership in Beijing there will be fear, as long as that many people keep showing up in Victoria Park, reminding Beijing they will neither forget nor give up” their fight for the vindication of the movement, as well as for democracy, he said.