Hong Kong photo essay: 180,000 rally to mark Tiananmen massacre anniversary
June 4, 2012 -- Green Left Weekly -- This photo essay by Tom Grundy, an activist-journalist based in Hong
Kong, shows the 180,000-strong candlelight rally held in Victoria Park,
Hong Kong on June 4 to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen
massacre in Beijing. Green Left Weekly republished it with permission from Hong Wrong blog.
The Goddess of Democracy statue.
The Hong Kong Alliance prepared 80,000 candles for the event, and quickly ran out.
While small demonstrations also took place in the mainland, Hong Kong
was the only part of China where rallies to commemorate the Tiananmen
massacre were tolerated by authorities.
Activist Fang Zheng, whose legs were crushed under a tank in Tiananmen
Square, became emotional as he laid a wreath for the dead.
How did China allow this rally?
I wonder how China permitted such a rally? It's evident that the number of people who participated in this rally shows people didnt forget Tiananmen massacre and people are still angry for such an incident and mad on the Chinese Government. Such a gathering could have never took place in China I guess.
180 000 gather against socialism in Hong Kong
Of course there are going to be large numbers of people in Hong Kong who would stand for "democracy" (read:capitalism) in Hong Kong. They even have a Western style statue of liberty, or a "goddess" of democracy. This plays into the almost religious awe in which liberals hold democracy as a perfect state, abstracted entirely from class realities on the ground.
It ill behoves socialists in the West to promote this type of conscious or unconscious anti-communism. A demand for "democracy" in the abstract with regard to the PRC is a demand for the restoration of capitalism, via the forcible overthrow of the Chinese state. It is as bad as calling for a war on the PRC.
Adam Baker