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Disagreement over June 4 not a clash between generations anymore|Glacier Kwong

蘋果日報 2021/06/03 09:34


I only participated in the June Fourth Vigil held by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (the Alliance) twice, in 2013 and 2020. I boycotted the June Fourth Vigil in Victoria Park for several years. However, in the post-National Security Law (NSL) era, I hope that Hong Kong people can put aside the differences between generations and factions, and re-examine the political significance of the June Fourth incident for Hong Kong in 2021.
I boycotted the Victoria Park Vigil because I never felt like I could convince myself to agree with the goal of “building a democratic China.” Identifying myself as a localist, I was merely sympathetic about the June Fourth Incident, which was a China’s democratic movement, not Hong Kong’s. We could mourn for those who died and suffered because it was indeed a tragedy, but “building a democratic China” is not our business. Back in 2016, a lot of my peers who had a strong sense of local identity argued, “As a Hong Kong citizen, why should we bother to care about a movement of another nation?” Our focus at the time was on what Hong Kong’s future would look like after 2047, and how we fought for genuine democracy.
But in the post-NSL era, Hong Kong people’s mourning for June Fourth is no longer about their Chinese nationalistic sentiment and national identity, but about creating a new discourse with their own identity.
That is why I showed up in Victoria Park last year. Since 2019, the dispute over June Fourth has ceased to be an argument about identity, fraction or generation. Regardless of whether we identify ourselves as a Hongkonger and whether we want to build a democratic China, we can and should pass on the truth of the June Fourth Massacre that took place 32 years ago. In the post-NSL era, as the room for resistance is shrinking, if we lose even the right to carry out the ritual of June Fourth or talk about it, other things will quickly go out of sight as well.
Therefore, this year’s June Fourth is politically more significant than the previous ones. The mourning for June Fourth is not just a mourning, but an occasion to show whether the people of Hong Kong still have the willpower to fight on in the era of national security.
That does not mean I have come to agree with the goal of the Alliance and identify myself as a Chinese, but that the mourning for June Fourth and the political activities in June and July this year foreseen are in fact interlinked. And given there is a new political meaning in the post-NSL era of mourning for June Fourth, I have decided that I will mourn the deaths in the June Fourth Massacre with many other fellow Hongkongers here in Berlin. I cannot openly call on people to go to Victoria Park or do anything because it is an open violation of the law, but I believe that Hong Kong people are very smart and creative when it comes to looking for room for resistance.
(Glacier Kwong, born and raised in Hong Kong, became a digital rights and political activist at the age of 15. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Law and working on the course for Hong Kong in Germany. Her work has been published on Washington Post, TIME, etc.)
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