On 4 June 1989 the Chinese government mobilised its army to “clear the venue” of protestors. The event was termed differently in different countries. While in Hong Kong we termed it as the June 4 Incident, in most parts of the western world it was regarded as the “Tiananmen Square Massacre”. That night a lot of people died, more people’s souls did too.
Fast forward to present, nearly 25 years after that fateful night, the Chinese community in Hong Kong is still commemorating this day; and for the west, probably less so. However, this year in Hong Kong, for the first time there were people saying that we should forget about the June 4 Incident and move forward. These suggestions ignited another series of debates across the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.
Hong Kong had undergone a lot of changes. Whenever people
knew that I was originally from Hong Kong they are interested to know whether
Hong Kong has changed since the hand over in 1997. I would tell them change is
expected so of course there are changes. While changes are structural and
political, core values seemed to be remaining quite intact. Hong Kong is still
a “work hard and live a good life” kind of place. However, as the wheel of time
continues to turn, ideologies in Hong Kong have evolved too. I remember earlier
this year when I was back for a family affair, I saw a TV forum discussing
about what does it mean to be a person who loves his country – referring to
China. The slogan of “Loving China, Loving Hong Kong” has been around for ages
since the hand over, but the meaning differs to different groups of people. At
the forum there was a girl representing the “China came first” camp. As I
watched the debate unfolded, I was astonished by the bullying attitude she had
whenever the discussion did not go her way. She would point her finger and tell
people off in an authoritative way and also trying to shut people up by talking
over them. My jaws dropped as I had never seen anything like that on Hong Kong
TV before. TV forums are known to be civilised and rational, until that night.
At that time I thought “Yeah Hong Kong really has changed”
and didn’t think about it much further. However, the recent comment from some
people about forgetting June 4 really triggered a nerve in me. I was
disappointed – how could you forget an incident when so many people lost their
lives in one night? Not matter what your take is on this event, it is still in
our history and forgetting this part of the history is not something that
anyone should do. Does that mean we don’t need to learn anything about this
anymore? Does that mean that lives lost are no longer valuable anymore? Or we
are just applying the “Winner takes it all” principle to this pivotal
historical incident in the Chinese history? Surely time had moved on and so
does life, but then when we talk about June 4, it is not just something that
should be taken lightly. China certainly doesn’t when you see how they usually tighten
security in Tiananmen Square every year around this date. So if the Chinese
government has not forgotten about this date (surely they learnt something out
of this disregarding the outcome) should the people of Hong Kong be doing so?
If Hong Kong no longer cares about what it stands for in Chinese history, is
there still a role for Hong Kong being a Special Administrative Region in
China? These were the questions I had in my head at that time.Certainly, I don’t want to get too emotional or worked up about this whole thing, but then I did feel that if one wants to erase the June 4 Incident, they are no different from people who wanted to erase the fact that Japan did invade China during the World War II. If they want to remember the latter, they have to remember the former – one cannot be so double standard about history, especially history involving the loss of lives. In my opinion, any suggestion to discount something of such importance is a step to the dark side of humanity – and that would bring no good to anyone.
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