June 4 still a taboo for leftists but sentiments run strong

Twenty years on from the bloody crackdown, June 4 seems a taboo topic in Hong Kong's leftist circles. Yet silence does not mean the day has been forgotten.

While the Beijing-friendly Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong maintains an official silence on the issue, conversations with some left-wing figures reveal that sentiments still run strong.

For former legislator Gary Cheng Kai-nam, memories of the frontline experience supporting students in Tiananmen Square before the crackdown are still vivid.

Mr Cheng, on behalf of the Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers, took HK$500,000 in cash donated in response to an appeal in Hong Kong.

'At that time, citizens' response was very enthusiastic,' Mr Cheng, who was a vice-chairman of the DAB from 1997-2000, recalled. 'We called on people to deposit donations into a Bank of China account. Within an hour, the bank's ATM system went down because too many people were making deposits,' said Mr Cheng, who was part of a core committee of the All Hongkong Citizens' Alliance in Support of the Chinese Patriotic Pro-Democracy Movement during the upheaval.

On May 27, 1989, Mr Cheng set off for a six-day trip to Beijing, with a large pile of HK$1,000 banknotes in his luggage - and the mission to ensure Hongkongers' donations would be used appropriately.