Young activists yesterday planned to turn their backs on Hong Kong’s commemoration of the bloody Tiananmen Square massacre amid growing calls in the territory for greater autonomy from China.
The vigil, which each year draws tens of thousands, has caused a widening rift in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp between those who believe the victims of the crackdown should be remembered and those who see the event’s message as increasingly irrelevant.
Semi-autonomous Hong Kong is the only location on Chinese soil to see a major commemoration to mark the military’s brutal crushing of pro-democracy protests in central Beijing in 1989, with residents gathering en masse in Victoria Park every year.
However, young activists from the new “localist” movement say Hong Kong should push for its own autonomy, even independence, rather than the democratization of China, which is part of the vigil’s main message.
Localism grew out of the failure of mass pro-democracy rallies in 2014 to gain concessions from China on political reform for Hong Kong.
A growing number of student groups have now broken away from the event, saying organizers have “lost touch” with Hong Kongers’ aspirations.
“For this generation, we want to put emphasis on fighting for democracy in Hong Kong,” Hong Kong University Student Union president Althea Suen (孫曉嵐) said.
Suen said that building a democratic China was “not our responsibility.”
The Hong Kong Federation of Students, a founding member of the alliance that organizes the vigil, said it would also not participate this year.
“The alliance has lost touch with Hong Kongers,” federation member Jocelyn Wong said. “The candlelight vigil has not made any progress in the past 27 years.”
Others were more acerbic in their criticism.
The Hong Kong Shue Yan University student union likened the organizers of the vigil as “pimps and bawds who run a brothel after they got raped themselves” on a Facebook post late last month.
The University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong were yesterday to hold alternative forums at the same time as the vigil
The vigil’s organizer, the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, said that, although it had not achieved its ultimate goal of getting Chinese authorities to admit to the crackdown, it had helped keep the memory alive.
Alliance member Richard Tsoi (蔡耀昌) said that if the vigil was axed, Tiananmen would be rendered a “non-issue” due to repression from Beijing.
The crackdown is branded a “counter-revolutionary rebellion” by Chinese authorities and many on the mainland remain unaware of it.
Tsoi hopes for a turnout of more than 100,000 people, similar to numbers in recent years.
The alliance said 135,000 people attended last year’s event.
Some student groups have backed the vigil, saying that it helped politicize a new generation and have organized forums to explain its impact to Hong Kongers.
A supportive petition was also signed by 300 representatives of various city groups, including legislators.
A large white banner emblazoned with “Never forget June 4, see you at Victoria Park,” was displayed on a rocky hillside on Friday morning, but was quickly removed by firefighters.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion