June 4 Erased from Hong Kong

The candlelight vigils in Victoria Park in HK are no more

The 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown is this Saturday. Earlier this year the Pillar of Shame, a statue dedicated to the victims of the June 4 massacre in Beijing was quietly taken down in the middle of the night in the University of Hong Kong, and last December, the Goddess of Democracy removed from Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

Days before the anniversary last year, the June 4th Museum in Mong Kok was forcibly shut down, its display items removed by the police, and the mass gathering in Victoria Park where participants shouted slogans, sang songs and lit white candles is no more.

This statue has been carted off into storage

The Hong Kong Alliance, organisers of the previously annual event were arrested and charged with being "foreign agents" over incitement to subversion.

Now because of fears of violating the national security law, churches in Hong Kong did not hold mass to commemorate the June 4 anniversary, ending the 33-year tradition.

"We find it very difficult under the current social atmosphere," said Reverend Martin Ip, chaplain of the Hong Kong Federation of Catholic Students, one of the organisers.

"Our bottom line is that we don't want to breach any law in Hong Kong," he said.

But luckily in Vancouver this past weekend, commemorations already began. 

At the University of British Columbia there is a Goddess of Democracy statue between the main study hall and the bus loop.

Materials from the June 4 Museum confiscated

"It's been happening in China for 33 years -- no one can say something about June 4," says Mabel Tung, of the Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement. 

"Right now, they say May 35 as representing June 4. Because they try to erase June 4. Young people in China, they don't know what happened June 4 because their parents didn't want them to know. They would be in trouble if they talk about that in Mainland China," she said.

The group will also hold a march and vigil in front of the Chinese consulate on June 4.

Tung says Beijing is afraid of June 4.

"They try to erase history," she said. "So they try to erase any image related to June 4 because Hong Kong is the one city in the world that still remembered June 4 every year with a candlelight vigil. Almost 200,000 people in the park... and now it's gone. So we have to keep the spirit here."

The Goddess of Democracy at UBC campus

Tung never thought the vigil would be banned in 2022 because Hong Kong was supposed to have 50 years of no change until 2047. 

But here we are. Reminders from statues to slogans painted on sidewalks and walls have pretty much been physically scrubbed away from the city, but the victims will forever be remembered in people's hearts and minds.