The Tiananmen Square protests were popular student-led demonstrations in Beijing in 1989. They were forcibly put down by China’s hardline leaders who used martial law to crack down upon protesters on June 3rd and 4th. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed.
LATEST NEWS & VIEWS
Exclusive: Cartoonist Badiucao says satire is the ‘temporary aspirin’ that can heal Hong Kong’s protest trauma
Chinese-Australian artist Badiucao has told HKFP that the power of political satire comes from deconstructing authority and it can act as a “temporary painkiller” for Hongkongers traumatised by the ongoing pro-democracy protests. In an exclusive live-streamed interview, the cartoonist shared his thoughts on the role of art in social movements and spoke of how humour […]
Macau bans annual Tiananmen massacre vigil citing Covid-19, despite no remaining cases
Macau has banned the annual Tiananmen Massacre commemorative vigil citing health concerns over Covid-19. The Special Administrative Region has seen 45 cases of the coronavirus – the last of whom recovered and was relased on Tuesday. It has recorded zero deaths and has not seen any new cases for 41 days. Lawmaker Au Kam San […]
COMMENTARY & ANALYSIS ON 1989
Is China headed towards another Cultural Revolution?: An interview with Professor Xu Youyu
This interview by Filip Jirouš originally appeared in Czech on Sinopsis.cz as part of a series on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement. Xu Youyu is a political science scholar who has conducted extensive research on China’s Cultural Revolution. He sympathized with the protesting students […]
‘Never bet against the people of Hong Kong’: Why I won’t abandon this city, even as its politics deteriorate
When asked, with increasing frequency, why I am not thinking of quitting Hong Kong as the political situation deteriorates by the day, I can reply with just two words – June Fourth. It may seem unduly macabre to focus on the commemoration of a massacre as a reason for a tenacious commitment to Hong Kong […]
June 4, 1989 in Hong Kong: How the Tiananmen Massacre shattered the reality of a 9-year-old boy
Thirty years ago on June 4, I sat around a small television screen at my grandmothers home in Hong Kong. I was nine years old. My grandmother sat closest to the television, on a small plastic stool. All of my family in Hong Kong were there in that room, in front of that small screen. […]
Hong Kong on the day of the Tiananmen Massacre: Rumours, unlikely protests and a brutal reckoning
Hong Kong 30 years ago: I was a humble minion sitting in close proximity to typewriters and telex machines at a venerable hong in Central. I shared an apartment with two friends in the Mid-Levels, for two or three thousand bucks each month. Central was mostly walkable. I remember waiting to cross Chater Road, and […]
FEATURES
Video: Over 180,000 attend Hong Kong’s Tiananmen Massacre vigil, organisers say
Huge crowds turned out for a mass candlelight vigil in Hong Kong on Tuesday evening marking 30 years since China’s bloody Tiananmen crackdown, a gathering tinged with symbolism as the city struggles to preserve its own cherished freedoms. The eye-catching spectacle — in which tens of thousands of Hong Kongers clutched candles, sang defiant songs and […]
Badiucao revealed: Chinese artist-provocateur unmasks in upcoming film on cancelled Hong Kong exhibition
For the past six months, Chinese dissident cartoonist Badiucao has kept unusually quiet. The artist-provocateur, armed with a keyboard and digital pen, is rarely one to mince his words, often relayed to his sizeable Twitter following. Vibrant and jocular, his drawings resemble desk scribbles, only with familiar political faces and references. See also: Event: Hong Kong premiere […]
‘It’s the same dictatorship’: Veteran activist Lee Cheuk-yan on keeping the flame of the Tiananmen protests alive
Veteran activist Lee Cheuk-yan has spent the past three decades resisting authoritarianism. In 1989, roused by the rallying cries for democracy, the then 32-year-old travelled to Tiananmen Square to deliver donations raised during a Hong Kong benefit concert to protesters. He was detained and made to sign a letter of remorse, around the time the tanks […]
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