June 4 is being commemorated in many places around the world, except China; the candlelight in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park commemorating June 4 has been extinguished by the authorities this evening.
The Beijing authorities try not to mention the word June 4. The authorities do not want people to ask who caused the June 4 massacre, a pro-democracy movement that was suppressed 32 years ago by the Chinese Communist Party, which said it was “a storm,” but the Tiananmen mothers will never forget how their children, who participated in peaceful demonstrations, were killed by the Chinese army.
It is reasonable to say that Xi Jinping is in power and that the Communist Party is more powerful than ever, but every year on June 4, the Beijing authorities try to silence them as if they were the enemy. Even so, there are always people holding candles in their circles of friends and at home for long nights. In Hong Kong, the massive public commemoration of June 4 has been going on for 30 years worldwide, and last year the Hong Kong authorities banned it for epidemic prevention, but tens of thousands of people still lit candles despite the ban. This year, the Hong Kong authorities deployed 7,000 police officers to guard against candlelighting.
There are no more candles in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park, but around the world, many people lit candles, physical and virtual, to honor the martyrs. In Paris, on Stravinsky Square near Pompidou, more than a dozen organizations, including China Solidarity, will commemorate the 32nd anniversary of June 4 tomorrow afternoon, and in the evening, some Parisians will light candles in front of Liu Xiaobo’s empty chair sculpture in Wangsang Park. Do the Hong Kong authorities dare to guarantee that the windows of Hong Kong people tonight will be absolutely dark as iron and will not let out a single candle light?
Some netizens tweeted that the Beijing authorities would like to eradicate the word “June 4” from the lexicon, so that people’s memory of the June 4 massacre would gradually fade away. In fact, after the June 4 massacre, the Beijing authorities have stepped up brainwashing projects, starting with elementary schools, to avoid mentioning the June 4 incident in all possible places where the text is published. When pressed by overseas media, as a last resort, it downplayed the incident as a storm. Beijing’s efforts cannot be said to be ineffective. Many young Chinese today, when asked about June 4, are bewildered and ignorant, but some of them, when they finally learn the truth, will be angry, and others, at least, are not grateful to the authorities for trying to make fools of them.
This is perhaps what dictators fear most, and this is why the previous poster described the Beijing authorities as hating to eradicate the words June Fourth from their lexicon. People’s memories are fading with the passage of time, and even many of those involved may not be as “bloodied” as they were at the time of the June 4 Incident, but can the Chinese Communist authorities erase the word June 4 by eradicating the massacre on that night?
On the night of June 4, 1989, many Chinese people’s dream of bringing their country into line with civilized systems was shattered in a massacre, and the Chinese Communist Party, which had a faint desire for political reform and had produced reformist leaders in the party, has since embarked on a path of complete division: getting rich on capitalism and dictatorship on communism. After Xi Jinping came to power, he “did not forget his original intention” and took advantage of the centenary of the CCP’s founding to promote a new history of the Party, which Xi said “if you want to destroy your country, you must first destroy its history.
The CCP’s new Party history does not even mention the tragic events of the Cultural Revolution, which caused the death of countless Chinese people, the artificial starvation that killed 30-40 million people in the 1960s, the massacre of students near Zhongnanhai that the CCP had to order to suppress after 40 years of rule, or the land reform that killed millions of China’s rural elite – wealthy farmers. It is also afraid to face the truth about the mass incarceration of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, where the U.S. and some Western parliaments believe Beijing is committing genocide, while Beijing says it is an educational training center to keep Muslims away from extremist Islam and terrorism.
Xi Jinping’s Communist authorities have abandoned even their promise to Deng Xiaoping, who is regarded as the originator of Communist reform, to keep Hong Kong’s capitalist system intact for 50 years, the only piece of China’s oriental pearl of freedom of expression and judicial independence preserved thanks to the Sino-British Joint Declaration, and because the people could not stand Beijing’s step-by-step erosion of the “one country, two systems” system and rose up in protest, Beijing authorities Finally, they dropped their masks and imposed the Hong Kong version of the National Security Law, settling scores after the autumn, sending the leaders of the pro-democracy faction that emerged in the storm against sending China to trial and sentencing one by one. Beijing wants to control Hong Kong as if it were a province in mainland China.
Nowadays, Xi Jinping’s power is certainly catching up with Mao Zedong’s, but the words he has been thinking about recently are “protect the rivers and mountains”, does he realize that it is a dream for one party to rule forever, since ancient times, the rivers and mountains always exist, but only the rulers who control the territory for a while are changed. The only thing that will change is the rulers who are in control for a while. Xi Jinping may believe that in order to preserve the kingdom, people should study the history of the Party, but how many CCP members believe in that history?
In the 32 years since June 4, China has undoubtedly become stronger and the CCP has undoubtedly become more authoritarian, but the CCP’s efforts to remove historical events, including June 4, have only worked in the official media. Analysts point out that it is worth questioning why Xi Jinping has such a serious sense of insecurity as he has continuously emphasized the prevention of major risks since 2018. He is running wild for his China dream, and why is the image of his ruling China in the world getting worse and worse?
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