MCLC: HK June 4 Museum (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: HK June 4 Museum (1)
***********************************************************

The June 4 museum in Hong Kong has successfully opened. See also an
accompanying video in the
report. 

Kirk 

===========================================================

Source: Voice of America (4/26/14):
http://www.voanews.com/content/tiananmen-square-memorial-opens-in-hong-kong
/1901912.html

Tiananmen Square Memorial Opens in Hong Kong
By Rebecca Valli

HONG KONG — A permanent museum to remember the Tiananmen crackdown of 1989
has officially opened in Hong Kong. Organizers say that 25 years after the
events, Chinese people need to know more about what happened, and call on
Beijing to face its troubled history.

The exhibition is the world's first museum dedicated to the brutal
crackdown ordered by the Chinese leadership 25 years ago.

While references to the crackdown are banned on the mainland, activists
and politicians in Hong Kong have long called on Beijing to offer a full
account of what happened on June 4th, 1989.

Lee Cheuk-yan, chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic
Democratic Movements of China, who is one of the organizers, says the
media blackout has left younger generations in the dark.

“They are very confused about what happened in Tianamen. They should come
here to learn more about June Fourth. We also hope they can carry that
knowledge and the spirit of the students movement back to China and strive
for for democracy,” he said.

The museum takes up less than 75 square meters on the fifth floor of an
office building in the Tsim Sha Tsui tourist district.

It is organized as a maze with pictures and written accounts of the events
leading up to the crackdown, when the government ordered the People's
Liberation Army to shoot at protesters.

In 1989, Chen Qinghua was a representative sent by the Hong Kong Student
Association to support the student movement, which had been demonstrating
for months against corruption and calling for political reform.

He says that in the late evening of June third he was at a medical station
near Tiananmen Square and what he saw filled him with disbelieve and anger.

“Starting from 10:30, 11 o’clock, people were brought in with gun wounds.
Some of them were dead on arrival. It was so sudden that, you are never
prepared for that,” said  Chen.

An official death toll has never been made public, and estimates range
from hundreds to thousands of dead.

The government in China says the protests were counter-revolutionary and
insists that China has moved on from that political turmoil.

The last 30 years of development, Beijing says, show that the country has
reached a “clear conclusion” on those events.

Liu Ruishao, an Hong Kong journalist,  was in Beijing during the crackdown
and says that economic development alone will not make China strong.

“June Fourth is a wound for all the Chinese people. If we do not absorb
the lessons from what happened, the efforts for a prosperous and
enlightened nation will all be useless,” said Liu.

The museum, which opened Saturday, ran into some opposition.

The building's owners committee tried to block the opening with a vote
earlier this month, an effort that organizers say was due to pressure from
mainland authorities.

On Saturday, pro-Beijing protesters stood outside the museum's building
holding banners suggesting violence was started by the student movement.