Overseas Hongkongers continue their annual commemoration of the June 4th Tiananmen Square massacre like the years before, with more and more mainlanders joining their ranks too. From 1990 to 2020, Hong Kong was able to hold large-scale candlelight vigils and rallies in public on June 4 every year. However, under the coercion of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) National Security Law, some Hong Kong people were forced to hold mourning activities in private.
On June 4, with the support of overseas Chinese, protests, vigils, and exhibitions were held in many cities around the world, including Australia, Japan, Taiwan, many European countries, the United States, and Canada.
Mr. Zhao, a Hong Kong native who attended the memorial service for June 4th in Birmingham, UK, told the Epoch Times reporter, “There are no candles for June 4th in Hong Kong, but they are all over the world.”
Former Hong Kong lawyer Kevin Yam told CNN, “What Beijing and Hong Kong (the regime) are doing is an attempt to erase history and memory, which is sad.” He will attend a memorial service in Melbourne, Australia, “for those who still remember, we have an obligation to let the world know that we have not forgotten,” he told CNN.
On the afternoon of June 4, people from all walks of life in Sydney, Australia, held a rally to commemorate the 34th anniversary of June 4th.
Chen Yonglin, a witness and survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre and former CCP diplomat, said at the rally that the CCP is a criminal group against humanity and the entire world should work against it.
One Chinese “post-90s” international student: “We shouldn’t do nothing just because we fear.”
On June 2, the long-awaited June 4th Memorial Museum opened in Manhattan, New York, which exposed the Tiananmen commemoration to the entire world–as the Hong Kong June 4th Memorial Hall was forced to close in 2021.
On display are items collected from massacre survivors, including newspapers documenting the event, a blood-stained shirt of a former reporter, and a decades-old printer smuggled out of China, used by the protesters during the time.
In the evening, protesters marched to the Chinese Consulate General in New York. Among them are not just the student leaders who were wanted by the CCP, but also many young Chinese “post-90s.”
“Today, more than 30 years later, we come to commemorate. We will never forget June 4th. We feel that the future will still change. We hold great hope and hope that China will become better and better.” Twenty-three years old Bruce (pseudonym), a Chinese student studying abroad, told Radio Free Asia that he does not plan to return to China until the Communist Party falls.
Xiao Hua, another Chinese student studying abroad, told Radio Free Asia that the White Paper Movement encouraged her to stand up bravely. She said that although she was worried about affecting her family in China, she still wanted to contribute a meagre amount to China’s democracy: “You shouldn’t stop doing it just because you fear.”
Twenty-two years old Guo Changjun, who came to the States to study for a master’s degree in biomedical engineering at Wright State University for less than a year, told Voice of America that before 2019 he learned the truth about June 4th by reading English newspapers and with VPN to circumvent the “Internet Great Wall. It is a responsibility to participate in this June 4th event, to commemorate those lost souls on that day.”
In Washington DC, on the evening of June 2, at the candlelight memorial service held at the Washington Victims of Communism Foundation, Americans, Hongkongers, Tibetans, and Uighurs attended the event and lit candles to mourn the victims.
Chinese Students Studying in France: Use VPN, Circumvent the Wall to Learn the Truth
On June 3, as the Paris city government held a white night event to celebrate the arrival of summer, a group of Chinese in Paris and representatives of human rights organizations silently held a white paper, which carried the names of the representatives of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement of China now held in prison, and the imprisoned Chinese dissidents. Others held up pictures of the “June 4 Tank Man,” and a replica of the “ Skamstøtten (Pillar of Shame)” by Danish artist Jens Galschiøt.A post-90s generation who did not want to be named told RFI: “I didn’t know anything about June 4th in China before, but I learned about it through circumventing the great firewall and Wikipedia.
“At the very beginning, I couldn’t believe how the great, glorious, and correct Communist Party (CCP) would do such a thing. My initial reaction was that foreign forces were trying to smear the CCP. Later, I learned about these things through exchanges with people from the previous generation. It really happened, and then I read the testimonies of those who witnessed the June 4th incident on the Internet, and then I realized the truth.”
“The so-called socialist education with Chinese characteristics that I received over the past few decades turned out to be all lies. I am sure I am not the only one. It is the feeling of many of my peers.”
British Hongkongers Hold Vigil in Front of Consulates in Major Cities
In the UK, people held about a dozen parades and vigils in London, Birmingham, Nottingham, and Manchester. Among them, the marchers in London gathered in Trafalgar Square and then marched to the Chinese embassy to hold vigils.In Birmingham, England, where many Hong Kong people live, a candlelight vigil was held in the city center near Chinatown at night. Although there was no display of a physical Pillar of Shame, the organizer specially printed a large poster and pasted photos related to 8964 on the ground, using e- candles to frame the numbers “896434” on it.
More than 100 Hongkongers participated in the event. Former Sha Tin District Councilor Yau Man-chun believes that even for those Hong Kong people who did not attend, as long as they have a conscience, they will mourn June 4th in their own way.
Graduate of Peking University in Germany: The CCP Will Be Put on Trial
On June 3, Germans held a protest in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. A giant poster of the sculpture “Pillar of Shame” symbolizing the “June 4th” massacre was displayed at the scene of the protest. Some immigrants from Hong Kong and Tibet participated. The protesters demanded that the CCP release Guo Feixiong, Xu Zhiyong, Ding Jiaxi, and other human rights defenders.Huang Yicheng, a graduate of Peking University, was arrested by the police while participating in a protest on Urumqi Middle Road in Shanghai on the evening of Nov. 27, 2022. He said that some students who participated in the “White Paper Movement” last year also came to the scene of the Berlin protest. He said that now he has come out from fear and hopes that China will have a democratic and constitutional government in the future.
“Our appeal now is to end the one-party dictatorship. We stand with all persecuted groups, not just to mention rehabilitating June 4th; it should be the time that we want to give the CCP a trial.”
