“Watch commemorating the June 4 Incident
An auction house in the UK recently put a watch issued to soldiers after the June 4 Incident in 1989 up for auction, and withdrew the lot after the seller was threatened.
According to the BBC on April 3, the auction house Fellows said that the watch, which was engraved with the words “89.6 Memorial”, had been withdrawn from the sale of luxury watches. Fellows said the seller had received threats from social media and feared for its safety.
Birmingham, U.K.-based Fellows considers the item to be of “international (public) interest” and was given to a soldier of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army by the Communist Party Committee and Beijing Municipal Government.
“In commissioning this item for auction, our team conducted extensive research to verify its provenance,” the spokesperson said, “and to the best of our knowledge, the seller is not associated with the PLA, nor the Chinese government.”
There are still conflicting opinions about the death toll from the June 4 Incident in 1989, when the Chinese Communist Party violently cracked down on pro-democracy students at Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
The auction house says the watch is of “international (public) interest” and is a “reminder of the June 4 incident.
“In the past we have sold war medals from all sides of global conflicts, as well as watches from prisoners of war,” a spokeswoman said, “and we are not in a position to comment on past events. What is important to us is to spotlight and report on historical events in a respectful and unbiased manner.”
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