MCLC: Tiananmen vigil spurs HK rift

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Tiananmen vigil spurs HK rift
***********************************************************

Source: WSJ (6/3/13):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324063304578522913867121682.h
tml?mod=wsj_valetbottom_email

Tiananmen Vigil Spurs Hong Kong Rift
By TE-PING CHEN  in Hong Kong and JOSH CHIN in Beijing

A Hong Kong annual ritual on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square
crackdown to commemorate its victims has gotten swept up in controversy,
the latest indication of the city's political tensions with China.

The former British colony retains its own political and economic systems,
and unlike in the mainland, open mourning of the hundreds of student
protesters believed killed in 1989 is tolerated there. Last year,
organizers said 180,000 people joined the annual June 4 candlelight vigil,
while police said 85,000 participated.

Organized by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic
Movements in China, the vigil has also been attracting growing numbers of
mainland Chinese participants.

But this year's proposed theme for the vigil, "Loving the country, loving
the people: Hong Kong spirit," ran into criticism—including an online
firestorm of calls to boycott the event over the slogan—and was abruptly
shelved just days before the Tuesday demonstration.

Lee Cheuk-yan, who chairs the alliance, said the slogan had originally
been chosen to emphasize that it is possible to love China without loving
the Communist Party. "But we don't want people to misunderstand and think
that we are imposing patriotism on them," he said.

The notion of patriotism has been the subject of fierce debate in Hong
Kong in recent months, following a government-backed attempt to begin
mandating pro-Beijing lessons in schools, a plan that was later abandoned
following mass street protests.

In March, Beijing stirred controversy by saying that future Hong Kong
leaders must "love China," while those who want to see an end to one-party
rule in China won't be acceptable candidates to Beijing, which will retain
veto power over any voting process for the chief executive.

"We are seeing the development of a local consciousness in Hong Kong that
says, 'We are not Chinese, and why should we be concerned about China?'"
said political analyst Joseph Cheng.

Meanwhile, in the mainland, where the Tiananmen crackdown continues to
rank among the most politically sensitive topics alongside Tibet and
Taiwan, online censors appear to be rethinking a recent strategy shift.

Late last week, previously blocked searches on the country's top
Twitter-like microblogging platform for terms related to the crackdown
suddenly began to produce carefully selected results. A search for the
term "June 4th incident," for example, produced a number of posts related
to protests in Tiananmen Square in 1976, inspired by the death of Premier
Zhou Enlai and which were later introduced in history books as a patriotic
movement.

Searches for similar terms, such as "6.4," turned up similarly innocuous
results.

The change in censorship tactics on Sina
<http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=SINA>
Corp.'s SINA -1.31%
<http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=SINA?mod=inl
ineTicker> Weibo microblogging service represented a significant jump in
the sophistication of censorship capabilities, according to Greatfire.org,
an organization that monitors Chinese censorship and first reported the
move on Friday.

But on the eve of the anniversary, Sina's censors appeared to have
returned to their old ways. Late Monday night, searches for "6.4,"
"Tiananmen incident" and "May 35"--code for June 4--all produced the
standard notice saying results couldn't be displayed due to "relevant
laws, regulations and policies."

Beijing-based AIDS activist and prominent dissident Hu Jia issued a call
for mainland Chinese to wear black to mark the anniversary and later joked
that buying black t-shirts in China would soon require real-name
registration, a reference to recent efforts by authorities in the southern
city of Kunming, eventually scrapped under public pressure, to prevent
protest against a proposed chemical plant by requiring people to register
with their identity cards to purchase face masks and white t-shirts.
Protesters had previously used face masks as props and t-shirts sprayed
with antipollution slogans.

Searches for "black shirt" were also blocked on Sina Weibo on Monday.

China's government has consistently cast the 1989 protest as an
"antirevolutionary riot." and downplayed their significance in history
text books. At a regular news briefing Monday, China's Foreign Ministry
rejected a U.S. State Department statement last week that repeated calls
for Beijing to end harassment of people who participated in the protests
and "fully account" for those killed or detained in the crackdown. Foreign
Ministry spokesman Hong Lei accused the U.S. of prejudice, urging
Washington to "respect the facts" and refrain from allowing the issue to
affect U.S. -China relations.

In Hong Kong, many mainland tourists have also begun flocking to a
temporary museum exhibit at a local university dedicated to the crackdown.
The exhibit, which contains newspaper clips, photos and video reels, has
attracted 12,000 people since its April opening, including dozens of
student groups, according to Mr. Lee, the alliance chairman. One-fifth of
those visitors, says Mr. Lee, are from the mainland.

Meanwhile, in the run-up to the anniversary, family members who lost
relatives in 1989 released an open letter criticizing Chinese President Xi
Jinping for what they described as ignoring appeals to revisit the
episode. The letter was released via the advocacy group Human Rights in
China, whose website is blocked in China.

China's government has never released an official toll of victims killed
during the crackdown or apologized for the actions of the troops at the
time.

Write to Te-Ping Chen at te-ping.chen at wsj.com and Josh Chin
atjosh.chin at wsj.com