My TakeAnnual June 4 vigil now seen as a reminder of what it means to be Chinese
Commemoration of the 1989 crackdown used to be a taboo subject but the powers-that-be now realise it’s preferable to alienation from the motherland
June 4 used to be a taboo subject for our chief executives. Now, even Leung Chun-ying says young people should care about it. How times have changed.
Tung Chee-hwa used to tell Hong Kong people they should drop the “historical baggage” inherited from the brutal crackdown in 1989. His successor, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, avoided the subject like the plague.
But when asked to comment about the annual commemoration, Leung said locals and mainlanders were “connected by blood” and the city should care about “major incidents” in the country.
This year, the controversy was the boycotting of the event in Victoria Park by the Federation of Students and all the university student unions, most of which have started agitating for the city’s independence.
The editorial board of Shue Yan University’s student union went so far as to call the June 4 organisers brothel keepers: “The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China has become pimps and bawds in a brothel after they themselves were raped.