Hong Kong held a Tiananmen Massacre memorial. About a hundred thousand people attended.
Communist China showed its true nature on June 4, 1989. In Hong Kong, people keep that memory alive.
The Chinese Communist Party killed thousands on that. Democracy advocates, students, and supporters were shot.
The demonstrators calling for reform in China were unarmed. They were peaceful. They were not even throwing rocks and bottles, as happens at so many protests.
The demonstrators, originally students and later a cross-section of Chinese society, were simply staying in Tiananmen Square until the government addressed their issues.
The Communist regime addressed their issues with tanks and machine guns.
No one knows exactly how many were killed. The Chinese regime won’t release any information. They denied the whole affair for a while, and then claimed the unarmed students attacked the soldiers.
“It’s not just commemoration,” said former legislator, Lee Cheuk-Yan. “It is a protest.”
“It is an anger against this regime that not just suppressed (what happened) in 1989, but also suppresses today. So it has every relevance to what is happening now in Hong Kong.”
In Hong Kong, people will not let the memory die.
Hong Kong is the only part of China where people are allowed to remember.
Communist China forbids such memorials anywhere else.
Internet searches for “June 4 1989” are blocked. Searches for “Tiananmen massacre” are forbidden. China wants the world to forget that day when it ran out of patience and turned to bullets.
Hong Kong citizens remember June 4 clearly because Hong Kong is fighting for democracy right now.
China took over in 1997 with a promise of “One country, two systems,” but Beijing has always ruled Hong Kong. The second “system” is a system of control, a system where only Beijing’s hand-picked “candidates” are allowed to run for office.
“We must not forget this important history,” said Lee Tat-On, who attended the memorial..
“We must remember this event for our mainland counterparts and not give up on our dreams (of achieving democracy).”
Hong Kong is fighting for its own democracy.
To people in Hong Kong, the Tiananmen massacre is not just “history.” To them the struggle is real, and current.
“June 4 Tiananmen crackdown plays a huge part in Hong Kong’s history,” explained graduate student Ka Ho.
“Since 1989, it has affected everyone including migrants escaping mainland or people resisting against the Communist Party.
“Everything that we are doing is related to June 4.”
