In the Chinese capital, 33 years later, what remains of the Beijing Spring, when collective memory has been locked by years of censorship?
The discontent returned to the campuses in the spring of 2022, says our correspondent in Beijing, Stephane Lagarde. Images that circulated on social media at Peking University or Tianjineast of the Chinese capital in recent weeks show young people gathered and chanting slogans.
Except that this time, the anger is aimed at the containment measures that prevent them from returning home. Young people angry at barriers, health restrictions and bureaucracy, but when you ask these three students what June 4 means to them, the answer is hesitant. ” I know there is a festival on the 4th of June, but I don’t know which one says one of them? The Dragon Boat Festival is asking for another one? Oh no, isn’t it something red rather (a reference to the Communist Party) asks the third… That’s it, that’s freedom! “. June 4, 1989, day of freedom, day especially of the intervention of the army against the popular uprising in Beijing, but also in 300 cities of China.
These students were not born 33 years ago, this teacher on the other hand yes. The memory also struggles to return. What is June 4? “ Uh, we haven’t talked about it for years. Was that when the students took to the streets? I was living in Henan Province at the time, I don’t remember. »
” Crayfish, fresh crayfish to take home », Launches a restaurateur forced to sell take-out in the street. In times of Covid-19, universities barricade themselves and those who have been authorized to leave put on their shells at the evocation of a memory suffocated by three decades of censorship.
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Time passes quickly, but in reality, it is very long for all those who have lost a loved one…
Wu’er Kaixi, one of the spokespersons of the 1989 movement
■ In Hong Kong, a commemoration more muzzled than ever
It has been two years since the commemoration of the Tiananmen massacre has been banned in Hong Kong, officially for health reasons. All the organizers of this June 4 vigil are currently in prison. Part of Victoria Park, the historic and traditional site of these vigils, has been closed and placed under close surveillance since Friday, June 3. However, we can perhaps expect small signs of commemoration, as explained the RFI correspondent, Florence de Changy.
The context has changed drastically in two years. Today we have to reckon with the national security law, and with health rules which continue to limit public gatherings. In addition to these bans, law enforcement officials have warned that even going “ only in Causeway Bay tonight, we could be arrested for unlawful assembly. Beijing even warned diplomats stationed in Hong Kong not to mark this date, as some had done last year, by lighting small candles in the windows of their offices. Even that, Beijing no longer tolerates it.
The Hong Kongers are therefore left with nothing but subterfuge: dress in white rather than black to indicate their mourning, just go “ to go for a walk around the park. Some bought movie tickets to have an alibi in case of arrest. And at one of Hong Kong’s top universities, students have scattered 3D-printed miniatures of the famous goddess of democracy, the symbol of the 1989 Chinese student movement, around the campus after the police tried to erase all traces of this memory that Hong Kong has, for 30 years, admirably maintained.