Our hearts will go on, so will the candlelight|Leung Kai-chi
Back on June 4th, 1998, Victoria Park was the focus of the global media. Their question: Can the first commemoration vigil of the June Fourth Incident after the 1997 handover be held as scheduled? I happened to be away from Hong Kong at that moment. The next day, I picked up a local newspaper, and the front page was the sea of candlelight at Victoria Park. I can still recall the succinct headline: Hong Kong Remembers. This year, on the Fourth of July, the media around the world are expected to return to Victoria Park to see for themselves whether a 31-year tradition will come to an end.
In the eyes of the international community, the June Fourth candlelight vigil at Victoria Park has always been an important barometer of whether the “One country, two systems” policy has been properly implemented. If Hong Kong people choose not to participate in the vigil anymore, or if the regime bans the vigil altogether, that will mean a fundamental change in the relationship between Hong Kong and China. If the candlelight goes out at Victoria Park, many people will see Hong Kong as identical to mainland China.
In the several years leading up to 1997, the number of participants in the candlelight vigil continued to fall amid the rush to make a fortune in mainland China and the sense of optimism about the 1997 handover fostered by public opinion. Back then, many were concerned about whether the vigil would peter out very soon. Over the past decade, however, the number of attendees has remained high, as the relationship between Hong Kong and China worsened significantly. Many people chose to express their dissatisfaction with the China-Hong Kong relationship by attending the vigil. Today, after the implementation of the Hong Kong national security law, it seems that a ban on the candlelight vigil has finally come, although it is 24 years overdue. Given the Chinese government’s full-on “wolf-worrier diplomacy” mode, those in power will probably not care about the message they are sending to the outside world by banning the vigil at Victoria Park. A backlash from other countries is well-anticipated. It is not even seen as a price to pay anymore, so there is no reason to avoid it.
The candlelight vigil at Victoria Park has been legally held for 30 years. Now those in power are determined to bring it to an end. What is their purpose? The police and the Department of Justice claim that it has been banned because of the pandemic, but no sane person would believe that. After all, almost 8,000 people were allowed to watch a football game at Hong Kong Stadium last week. It is crystal clear that the restrictions on gatherings are only targeted at political activities. In contrast, the government in Macau is being more honest, as it has said that slogans such as “ending the one-party dictatorship” might be tantamount to the crime of “inciting subversion of state power”.
However, the accusation of “the subversion of state power” clearly stretches credulity to the limit. The candlelight vigils at Victoria Park have been held for so many years, but what actual impacts have they had on the Chinese regime so far? Come to think of it, in 1984, when Deng Xiaoping discussed the future of Hong Kong, he stated that “you can’t bring down the CCP by cursing it.” In fact, at one point the younger generation of Hong Kong questioned the vigil at Victoria Park for being “ritualized”. They argued that the vigil lacked actual meaning, and had become a yearly occasion on which they merely shouted “See you next year at Victoria Park”.
However, things do get paradoxical from time to time. If the vigil is banned and is gone forever at Victoria Park, it will get even more attention. A ritualized event has suddenly become a radical form of expression. Questions such as whether the vigil can continue to exist, how it will disappear if it will disappear, and how it can carry on in other ways have given new meanings to the vigil.
Always hard to preserve history in China
The meaning of the candlelight vigils at Victoria Park in the past lay with the determination to preserve a segment of history. There have been many incidents of man-made disasters in modern China being ruthlessly erased from the official version of Chinese history. Tens of thousands of civilians were starved to death during the siege of Changchun in the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Now, if you go on a trip to Changchun, you will be told that what happened was the “peaceful liberation” of Changchun. Tens of millions of people died in the famine after the Great Leap Forward. In Xinyang, Henan, people were forced to practice cannibalism in order to survive. But there is not a memorial hall or a public memorial ceremony to commemorate the incident. Even the lessons of the 10-year Cultural Revolution have changed. In the past, the lessons were that personality cults were horrible, and checks and balances were important. Now they have become “don’t talk about politics” and “making money is the most important thing”. It has always been difficult to preserve history in China today.
Today, not only must history be guarded, but it is also necessary to guard the candlelight vigil that is intended to guard history. After so many years, the vigil has created another set of local meanings for Hong Kong. It is a symbol of Hong Kongers’ spirit of not resigning themselves to their fate. Those in power might not really believe that the vigil itself is enough to rock the foundations of the regime either, but the vigil shows that there are some very stubborn people in the world who just don’t like to kowtow to make a living. They reject the notion that “those who are powerful and fierce have right on their side”. They believe that there are some moral principles that must be adhered to, the very things those in power are desperate to eliminate. In a world in which only power and interests matter, any kind of idealism is regarded as a distraction and must be eradicated.
If that is the case, the end of the vigil at Victoria Park will not mean the struggle is over. As long as one clings to the belief that power is not everything and that there is still a value to ideals, any visible place in the world is a candlelit Victoria Park. Those in power can seal off the entire Causeway Bay, but they cannot lock everyone. The spirit of the vigil is passed down whenever there are people who refuse to follow the law of the jungle. This, if put in another way, is what we have been hearing every year at Victoria Park: Our hearts will go on, so will the candlelight.
(Leung Kai-chi, current affairs commentator)
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