A voice to die for

07.06.2010

Couples with small children, mothers with babies in arms, students, young people on a date and a splattering of grey heads made up the over 150,000 people who stood at attention, candle in hand, in the deathly quiet of Hong Kong’s massive Victoria Park on the evening of June 4, the 21^st anniversary of the massacre that took place in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, back in 1989. We bowed three times, in the Chinese custom of respect for those who have died.

A small puff of balmy wind put my candle out. I gestured to the young man standing ramrod straight at my left side. He bowed respectfully, held out his candle, with his hands cupped around it in the formal Chinese gesture of offering a gift, while I relit my candle from his. We then bowed to each other and he resumed his attentive stance.

As the solemn part of the ceremony ended, Joe Chan said to me enthusiastically, “This is my seven-year-old nephew. This is his eighth time at the Tiananmen vigil and he is still only seven-years-old.” A 30-something-year-old man told me that he has been to every vigil since the fateful day on June 4 back in 1989. “My father brought me when I was a young boy,” he said with pride. “And I have not missed one since.”

At a prayer service prior to the vigil, Catholic university students led about 700 people in prayer, asking that the Chinese government would vindicate the memory of those who died and recognise their heroism and that of the survivors. Although many of those present were not born on the day the tanks rolled and mowed down the massed students, the president of the Catholic Students Foundation, Jackie Liu, said, “Young people have a responsibility to carry on telling the truth and building a better society.”

He stressed that it is faith that brings hope into the dark corners of our world. “The suffering of our compatriot students 21 years ago must be remembered, not in hatred or with a vengeful heart, but to bear witness to the freedom and human dignity that Jesus preached,” he said.

While the Beijing government alternately denies or vindicates its action in cutting down the innocent, unarmed students, video footage shown on Hong Kong television on the evening of 4 June 1989 shows tanks rolling into the masses of people that had built up in Tiananmen Square over the weeks, in a demand for an end to corruption in government and to one-party rule of their country.

The roar of engines, together with the staccato crack of gunfire drowned the voice that 186 named students, plus up to possibly 10,000 others according to some estimates, died for as the residue smoke from the tear gas and incendiary bombs hid the disfigured and lifeless bodies from the camera lens.

In Hong Kong, thousands of people went out into a tropical rain storm to show their disgust, shock and disapproval to the Chinese authorities and the following year an anniversary memorial was organised in the then-British colony; 150,000 people came to insure that the voice to die for lived on.

People have been trooping in their tens and, sometimes, hundreds of thousands to the giant Victoria Park in downtown Hong Kong every June 4 ever since. This year marks the 21st anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen, and over 150,000 people again stood in candlelight out of respect for the dead and in the hope for a better and freer future, in the balmy heat of a summer evening.

While governments say it is time to forget the massacre, the people refuse to do so. At a reflection evening prior to the vigil, around 30 people aged between 20 and 30 talked about what Tiananmen means to them.

All were young at the time, some not yet at school and others not yet born. Still, Tiananmen has a meaning for them. It may not be the event itself, as they were too young to comprehend. What remains with them is the shock of their parents. The strange behaviour of their mothers and fathers, the feeling of fear in the home and the grave discussions about what will happen when Hong Kong reverts to Chinese rule.

“In the middle of the news, my mother announced we would say the rosary,” one said. Another shared, “I could not understand why I had to behave differently at dinner. Mum and dad could not take their eyes off the television and they kept telling me to keep quiet.” Another said, “I did not know why my mother was crying,” while yet another remembered, “My father took me out in the pouring rain to sit in the street. He never did that before.”

Those who were older remember the fear of realising that this is the government that will soon rule Hong Kong, asking themselves what is our destiny? At schools, classes were cancelled and teachers spoke with students about what had happened in the Chinese capital.

For one, an eight-year-old at the time, it was a day for life determining decisions. “I decided to be a journalist, so I could write about these terrible things and tell people about them,” she said. “And that is my job today. I never wanted to be anything else.”

As interest in the vigil grows each year and those attending get younger and younger the call from governments to forget about Tiananmen seems less likely to be realised, bequeathing a hope that one day, the truth might just be told.

 Fr Mulroney is the Editor of the Sunday Examiner newspaper in Hong Kong.