- China has discouraged large-scale commemorations at home for the Tiananmen Square massacre, making commemorations outside China important to mark the event’s historic anniversary, which marks 35 years on Tuesday.
- On June 4, 1989, government forces opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds, possibly thousands.
- In Hong Kong, annual vigils that have been held for decades to mourn the dead have disappeared since China imposed its national security law.
As the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing approaches, Rowena He, a leading scholar of that bloody chapter in modern Chinese history, has been busy giving a series of talks across the US, UK and Canada, each one on behalf of those who have no voice.
The 1989 crackdown, in which government forces opened fire on student-led pro-democracy protesters, killing hundreds, if not thousands, remains taboo in mainland China. Once a beacon of freedom, Hong Kong has seen its massive June 4th vigils, which for decades commemorated the victims, disappear — a casualty of the city’s crackdown on dissent following massive anti-government protests in 2019.
He was still reeling from the loss of her academic position last year when Hong Kong authorities refused to renew her visa, a move widely seen as a sign of a decline in intellectual freedom in the financial hub.The meetings were packed, but the former participant in the 1989 protests in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou saw it as her duty.
Hong Kong convicts 14 pro-democracy activists in landmark national security case
“You can’t light a candle in Hong Kong anymore, so we light candles all over the world,” she said.
As large-scale commemorations at home have virtually disappeared due to Beijing’s hardline political stance, commemorations abroad have become increasingly important in preserving the memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Over the past few years, there has been a growing number of lectures, rallies, exhibitions and plays on the subject in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and Taiwan.
These actions foster hope and counter the more aggressive efforts to erase vestiges of repression, particularly in Hong Kong. In 2021, Hong Kong police charged three leaders of the protest group with subversion under the sweeping national security law of 2020 that all but wiped out public dissent. The group subsequently voted to disband. Tiananmen-related statues were also removed from universities.
Rowena He poses for a photo on the set of her play “35th May,” the title of which is a euphemism for June 4th in London on May 30th 2024, as the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing approaches. Rowena He, a leading researcher of the incident, has traveled across the US, UK and Canada to give a series of talks to those who cannot speak out. (AP Photo/Khin Chun)
Last week, Hong Kong police arrested seven people on suspicion of sedition under Hong Kong’s new national security law for social media posts commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre. Ahead of the anniversary, a Christian newspaper that usually publishes stories about the incident kept its front page nearly blank. The paper said its only way to respond to the current situation was to replace words with blank boxes and white spaces.
On Tuesday, the park where the rally was once held will become the site of a carnival run by pro-Beijing groups.
But attempts to silence the commemorations have failed to erase harrowing memories from the minds of a generation of liberal-minded Chinese, years after tanks rolled into central Beijing to break up weeks of student-led protests that spread to other cities and were seen as a threat to Communist Party rule.
She was 17 at the time and recalls how protesters like her took to the streets out of love for their country. When the crackdown happened, she couldn’t sleep and spent all night in front of the TV. After returning to school, she was required to recite the official explanation for the government’s suppression of the riots to pass her exams.
“I’ve never killed anyone, but I’ve lived with survivor’s guilt for many years,” she said.
To preserve the memory of the incident, a museum commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre opened in New York last June, featuring bloodstained shirts and tents used by student protesters.
A similar museum in Hong Kong run by rally organizers was closed in 2021.
As of early May, director Wang Dan, a former student leader of the Tiananmen Square protests, estimated that about 1,000 people had visited the New York museum, including Chinese immigrants, U.S. citizens and Hong Kongers. To expand attendance, Wang said he plans to hold temporary exhibitions on U.S. college campuses and, in the longer term, in other countries.
He said the overseas memorial events were crucial because people in mainland China and Hong Kong could watch overseas memorial activities online.
“This could have an impact in mainland China because young people know how to use VPNs to get around internet censorship,” he said.
Aline Sierp, a professor of European history and memory at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, said commemorations abroad provide an opportunity to spread and perpetuate memories and pass them on to others and future generations.
But she said that can be a “double-edged sword” because adapting memories to a new location runs the risk of them becoming fragmented or losing context in the future.
Alison Landsberg, a memory studies scholar at George Mason University in Virginia, said the overseas efforts have the potential to inspire people elsewhere facing their own challenges in the pursuit of democracy.
To pass on memories to the future, she said, films and TV dramas can be powerful tools to preserve memories of events people did not experience.
She said overseas theatre productions about the crackdown, which began in Taiwan last year and continued in London this year, have great potential to make those connections and reach a wider audience.
“When you have a dramatic story, you can draw the audience into the story in an intimate way,” Landsberg said.
Audiences at a London theatre last week were visibly moved, some to tears, to the play “35th May,” a title that subtly alludes to the June 4th crackdown.
Produced by Lit Ming-wai, one of the Hong Kong migrants who moved to the UK after the implementation of the 2020 National Security Law, the play tells the story of an elderly couple who want to properly mourn their son who died in 1989.
Director Kim Pearce, who was born in Britain in the 1980s, said the tragedy resonated with her from an early age and was once moved to tears when reading the poem “Tiananmen” by James Fenton. Working on this project, she said, has made her connect with the story even more deeply.
Click here to get the FOX News app
British theatre-goer Sue Thomas, 64, said she was also deeply moved by the play. “It makes me think about it in a more heartfelt way, especially now that I’m a parent myself, even though I wasn’t a parent then,” she said.
At the theater, scholar He was one of the speakers after the performance, and she shared her own struggles and motivations for her work with the audience. She said that the play was so powerful that it made her relive the trauma of the past 35 years, bringing her to tears and even causing her to lose her contact lenses.
“It shows how much suffering people have endured over the years,” she said. “I think if there’s anything we can do, it’s to help the younger generation understand this.”
