June 4 Remembered in Vancouver

"Don't Forget June 4" written in chalk on the ground

The Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement commemorates the June 4 Tiananmen Square massacre every year, with not only marches to the Chinese consulate on the anniversary day, but also events leading up to it. 

This year the group moved up the march to May 27, where New Democratic Party MP Jenny Kwan participated. She was recently cited as one of two politicians a Chinese diplomat allegedly targeted. The diplomat was subsequently sent back to China. 

Meanwhile two remembrances were held today in two locations. 

A terrier took part in the event

In the morning there was a ceremony held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, a cemetery in Burnaby, and at around lunchtime another by the small Goddess of Democracy statue that stands near the Student Union Building at the University of British Columbia.

Sadly a fence was an ugly backdrop, as there is a construction site right next to the Student Union Building and there are fears the statue may be moved again.

Originally, Mabel Tung, chair of the VSSDM, had tried to get the statue placed in Chinatown, but it was vehemently opposed to the proposal. It was eventually accepted at UBC in 1991.

About 30 people showed up at the latter event, almost all wearing black, masks and sunglasses. The majority were middle-aged, along with a few young people, and one or two young families. 

Tung led the mini ceremony, first asking attendees to stand for a minute of silence. She then gave a quick speech to recount what happened 34 years ago, and how there used to be a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong's Victoria Park every year until 2020. 

The activist said as a result it was even more important for the Hong Kong diaspora to continue to remember not only the victims of the bloody crackdown, but also the Tiananmen Mothers group, and the victims of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong.

Most attendees took a group photo together

Attendees were given either yellow carnations or roses and asked to line up one by one to pay their respects to the Goddess of Democracy. Many bowed three times in front of the statue before placing the flower on the pedestal. There was also a wreath of yellow carnations for the Tiananmen Mothers.

Nearby was a makeshift memorial with flowers and photocopied drawings of Chow Tsz-lok, the 22-year-old student who fell to his death on the third storey of a carpark in Tseung Kwan O on November 4, 2019 during the Hong Kong protests. 

Another portrait was of Li Wenliang, the doctor in Wuhan who alerted the world about Covid-19 in December 2019 and died in February soon after he was infected.

The third person remembered was Peng Ming, a pro-democracy activist and Christian who founded the China Development Federation in 1998. Later that year the authorities banned the group and Peng was sentenced to 18 months of re-education through labour.

Upon his release in 2000, Peng went to Thailand with his parents where they were granted refugee status. He later moved to San Francisco and re-established his federation again, calling for the end of one-party rule and replacing it with democracy.

A memorial for activist Peng Ming

Four years later during a visit to his parents in Thailand, Peng was lured into Burma by Chinese special agents and abducted into China where he was convicted on trumped-up charges. In 2005 he was sentenced to life in prison in Hubei, but 11 years later the prison authorities announced he had died suddenly at the age of 58.

Next Sunday VSSDM will hold a candlelight vigil at Dr David Lam Park from 4pm onwards. 

Remembering the SARS Doctor Whistleblower

Jiang was hailed a hero but then spoke out about Tiananmen

We are sad to note the passing of Dr Jiang Yanyong, the doctor who blew the whistle on the SARS epidemic in 2003. He was 91 years old.

Can you believe it's been 20 years since SARS and now we're coming out of the global Covid-19 pandemic?

The death of the respected military surgeon was reported in Hong Kong media and abroad, as well as some friends in China, but not in state media.

The Metropole Hotel where SARS started in HK

When SARS broke out in early 2003 in China, it was played down by the government, and Jiang felt this was a public health emergency that people needed to know. 

It had also spread to Hong Kong via a mainland Chinese doctor who stayed in the Metropole Hotel in Kowloon. There were 1,755 cases, of which 298 people died in Hong Kong.

The then retired doctor wrote a letter to several news organisations refuting the official line, and accused China's then top health official Zhang Wenkang of "abandoning even his most basic standards of integrity as a doctor."

"I was telling the truth," Jiang told the state-run Beijing News in 2013. "I believed the government would treat me fairly."

Foreign journalists caught wind of the letter which led to the World Health Organisation extending its stay to inspect hospitals where Jiang said there were hidden cases, which put pressure on the government to fire Zhang and the mayor of Beijing.

Jiang was briefly hailed nationwide as an "honest doctor", and he used the respect garnered to write another letter, calling on the Chinese leadership to acknowledge the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square was wrong, and that the student movement had in fact been a "patriotic movement."

Jiang wrote about the fatal wounds he saw

He wrote about what he saw at No. 301 Military Hospital in Beijing the night of June 3 after the tanks rolled into the square and People's Liberation Army soldiers fired live ammunition at student protesters.

Jiang saw many of the wounded civilians in his hospital, hit by bullets designed to break apart after impact and shred internal organs.

"My brain buzzed and I almost passed out," he recalled. "Lying before me this time were our own people, killed by children of the Chinese people, with weapons given to them by the people."

But after this letter was released, Jiang and his wife were detained. He underwent several interrogation sessions and was not allowed to leave the country, basically under house arrest.

Jiang didn't stop pressing for accountability. Even in 2019 on the 30th anniversary of the crackdown, he wrote a letter to Xi Jinping demanding justice for the "crime" in 1989. Then 87 years old, Jiang was under house arrest again.

Li may never be remembered in China again

And now his heroic efforts of speaking out about the SARS epidemic are largely wiped out of textbooks.

In a 2017 test-prep school multiple choice question asked about Jiang's decision to come forward about SARS. The "correct" answer was B: Doing so was wrong, because it harmed the interests of the nation, the society and the community, and he should be subject to legal punishment.

Sadly Li Wenliang, the doctor who sounded the alarm about Covid-19 will never even get a mention. 

History repeats itself, almost 20 years later.