By Fabian Hamacher
TAICHUNG, Taiwan (Reuters) – Hong Kong artist Kacey Wong is striving to keep alive the memory of China’s June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators from his adopted home of Taiwan, as Chinese authorities again bar all public commemoration or discussion of the killings in 1989.
Wong, 54, said June 4 has inspired him ever since he saw television news images of a lone Chinese man in a white shirt stand in front of a column of tanks, the moment that became the iconic image of the student and worker protests in and around Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing.
“I was totally in shock. I was like, ‘Wow, he’s so brave, I wouldn’t do that,'” Wong told Reuters in his studio in Taiwan’s central city of Taichung, recounting how he inadvertently glimpsed the footage when a university student in the U.S.
“The message we are sending out to the Chinese Communist Party is, ‘We did not forget. We did not forget that 35 years ago, your party killed innocent citizens,'” he added.
Tanks and troops entered the square before dawn on June 4, 1989, opening fire on protesters.
The topic remains taboo in China and the ruling Communist Party has never released a death toll, though rights groups and witnesses say the figure could run into the thousands.
In China-ruled Hong Kong, which once hosted large annual candlelight vigils for the event in a downtown park, authorities have prevented such gatherings in the past few years.
Last Tuesday Hong Kong police arrested six people for sedition under a new national security law enacted this year, stemming from what media said were online posts linked to June 4. Two more have been arrested since.
The last vigil in Hong Kong, in 2019 drew more than 180,000 people, organisers estimated, filling six football fields.
Wong became involved in the commemorative efforts for June 4 a little over a decade ago, when he thought it was time for a different approach to preserving the memories.
“To commemorate is to defend and to treasure the dream of those who lost their lives, yearning for freedom and democracy,” said Wong, adding that he sees past events as “raw material” for protest movements reaching into the future.
Among the Tiananmen-related artworks he has created are wax feathers moulded from candles collected at previous June 4 vigils in Hong Kong.
Known as “Feathers of the Yellow Bird”, he said these symbolise “Operation Yellowbird”, a plan by Hong Kong activists to help dissidents escape amid a massive manhunt by Chinese authorities after the 1989 crackdown.
Other works include an antique bicycle adorned with a black banner reading, “Don’t want to remember. Dare not forget,” that Wong would ride as performance art, handing flowers to passers-by to commemorate the dead.
Wong said he left Hong Kong in 2021 for the democratic island of Taiwan, when wide-ranging arrests under a China-imposed national security law made him feel unsafe.
Taiwan is the only part of the Chinese-speaking world where June 4 can be remembered openly, with a commemoration event planned in Taipei, the capital. Others are planned in countries such as Britain, Canada and the United States.
(Reporting by Fabian Hamacher; Writing by James Pomfret; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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