Opposition lawmakers said they'll teach Chinese tourists about democracy as tens of thousands of mainlanders flood into Hong Kong during the weeklong May Day holiday.
Several lawmakers and other activists handed out leaflets about China's bloody crackdown on the democracy movement in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, to mainland visitors at Hong Kong's Victoria Peak yesterday.
PHOTO: AP
"End one-party dictatorship! Build a democratic China!" chanted the lawmakers as they unveiled a goddess of democracy statue on the Peak.
China's press is tightly controlled and the 1989 democracy protests, in which hundreds if not thousands of people were killed by the Chinese army, remains a taboo subject on the mainland, where people's speech and assembly rights are curtailed.
"We've always wanted to break through China's media censorship, and the influx of mainland tourists gives us a golden opportunity to do just that," said lawmaker and unionist Lee Cheuk-yan (
But the mainland visitors on the Peak seemed not so keen. Few stopped at an exhibition board to look at a display of photos and newspaper clippings of the 1989 protests. Others took the leaflets without reading them.
"I'm not interested," said Long Qing, a 25-year-old tourist from the central Chinese city of Wuhan. "This isn't something we usually talk about."
Long said she's heard about June 4, but wasn't sure what happened and isn't keen to find out more.
Charmaine Yang, a mainland trader from Beijing, said China has become more open since 1989 but she agrees it will still take time before people can openly discuss democracy on the streets.
Yang said she supported the Chinese student's demands at the time, but thinks China will only have greater democracy when the majority of people want to push for it.
"But their top priority now is a good economy and a decent living. When people have money, then they'll worry about freedoms and democracy," Yang said.
Calls to China's representative office here went unanswered early yesterday.
The lawmakers and activists also gave mainland visitors maps showing the places where Hong Kongers held massive rallies in recent months to demand full democracy in this former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Hong Kong enjoys western-style freedoms that are unheard of on the communist mainland, but has remained partially democratic since the handover.
Beijing crushed Hong Kong's hopes for quickly attaining universal suffrage by ruling Monday that the territory can't directly elect its next leader in 2007 or all lawmakers in 2008.
Many here have been clamoring for the right to directly elect the chief executive and all lawmakers. Ordinary Hong Kongers now have no say in picking their leader, but they will directly choose 30 of 60 legislators in September elections, up from 24 last time.
Critics, including the US and Britain, charged that Beijing's decision has harmed Hong Kong's promised autonomy.
Full democracy is set out as an eventual goal in Hong Kong's mini-constitution but no timetable is given.
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