Subdued but Not Silenced, Hong Kong Tries to Remember Tiananmen Massacre

They had been barred from holding their usual memorial, but that did not mean they would not remember.

They gathered online, to watch a reading of a play about the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing on June 4, 1989. They prowled bookstores, on a scavenger hunt for protest-themed postcards hidden in the stacks. They scribbled the numbers 6 and 4 on their light switches, so that everyday actions would become small acts of defiance.

Democracy advocates in Hong Kong are grasping for new ways to sustain the memory of the Chinese military’s bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests, under a government increasingly bent on repressing dissent and free expression. The city’s authorities have, for the second year running, banned a candlelight vigil in Victoria Park in Hong Kong, warning that attendance could lead to five years’ imprisonment.