A monument to the Tiananmen Square massacre faces the threat of removal, part of a broader effort in Hong Kong to erase the public memory.
Under the relentless crush of Beijing, the courtrooms of Hong Kong have become some of the few venues safe for protest in the city. Defendants accused or convicted of political crimes have turned otherwise banal hearings and bail applications into opportunities to voice dissent and challenge the arduous legal process. In mid-November Lee Cheuk-yan, a veteran prodemocracy figure, used his mitigation hearing, where defendants can address the court in hopes of obtaining a lesser sentence, to deliver a stirring and defiant speech. He recounted his memories of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, exalted Hong Kongers for never forgetting the tragedy, and excoriated city officials for curtailing basic freedoms. Lee, who for decades helped organize the annual vigil held in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park to mourn the crackdown, choked up as he addressed the courtroom. “I want to thank the people of Hong Kong who kept the promise of 1989,” he said. “In the face of suppression, they persisted, honoring the memory of the June Fourth Massacre in Victoria Park with their candlelight. Your Honor, the people of Hong Kong who took part needed no person or organization to incite them. If there was a provocateur, it is the regime that fired at its own people. “For 31 years,” he continued, “our unyielding memory and unrelenting conscience drove us to keep the promise, persist in honoring their memory, demand truth and accountability, and carry on the pursuit of freedom and democracy of the Chinese people.” Yet the unyielding memory of which Lee spoke has come under sustained attack this year, part of a broader effort by Beijing, its loyalists in the city, and an ever-growing list of collaborators to erase Tiananmen from public memory. Weaponizing pandemic protocols and vague threats of possible national-security violations, authorities have canceled the once-annual vigil for the past two years. Prominent activists, Lee included, who took part in prior gatherings have been arrested. A museum dedicated to Tiananmen was abruptly closed. Its contents were hauled away by police as evidence against members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which organized the vigil and ran the museum. The group disbanded as a result. Unsatisfied with residents being only physically barred from viewing its displays, Hong Kong officials blocked access to the museum’s website as well. An investigation by Hong Kong Free Press found that dozens of books on the topic of Tiananmen have disappeared from the city’s libraries. One monument that has escaped erasure, just barely and perhaps only briefly, is also the city’s most prominent dedicated to Tiananmen, the Pillar of Shame statue. An orange cenotaph of pained, contorted bodies constructed as a memorial to protesters killed in the massacre, it was put on permanent public display to serve, as its creator, Jen Galschiøt, wrote in 1997, as a test of the authorities’ “guarantees for human rights and freedom of expression in Hong Kong.” The pillar was staged at the University of Hong Kong, the city’s oldest and most prestigious institute of higher learning, in 1998, after being displayed at other campuses. For more than two decades, the city passed Galschiøt’s assessment. Students and activists gathered every spring to ceremonially wash the structure, which across its base reads The old cannot kill the young forever.
