Passing on the truths and memories to the next generation is a moral responsibility. On the other hand, teaching the young generation partial truths or distorted version of historical events is wrong and unethical. No matter how bitter and shameful it is, governments should be bold and courageous to allow children to know the truths, especially those relating to historical events. In doing so, authorities put themselves on a higher moral and ethical ground. Such efforts add to the credibility of governments and as a result, gain the trust of not only the people of their own, but the global community.

Parents often relate their childhood experience to their children. I often tell my children about my childhood, which is vastly different from theirs. Telling what you have lived or witnessed is passing on historical memories and the truths associated with them. But those are personal memories. Then, there are collective memories, which are experiences of a larger community of people at a given time. Such memories shape the ethos of a society and become part of history. The massive protests and gatherings by the people of Hong Kong in May and June 1989 are an important part of their collective memories. That was the first time about a million Hong Kong people had taken to the streets and marched peacefully. I told my children and other youths who were born after 1989 about those experiences—how powerful those moments were, how peaceful those gatherings were and how symbolic they were of Hong Kong people’s love for and care about their fellow countrymen in the motherland. I am sure those of you who experienced that have also told the youths and children your personal experience.

Narrating one’s stories and experiences create intellectual curiosity among the youths. It is now not 1989 when people did not have the internet or even mobile phones. Information is at your fingertips. Nowadays, adults also learn from children—at the dining table I have learned much from my children about historical events I am completely unfamiliar with. But we are not spoon-fed passively. We debate and argue with each other to make sure what we say makes sense as well as being a truthful account of history. We challenge one another by asking questions like, “where did you learn that from?”, “who authored that information?” to make sure the truths in the memories are intact and credible. That is the spirit of Hong Kong we all, including the international community, identify with. Any effort to take that away or modify that could practically kill Hong Kong.

Saburo Ienaga was one of the most respected Japanese historians. He was not popular among the government and ruling politicians in Japan, but well-liked by the progressive in the country and the international community. He fought in his entire life to tell the truth—pointing out the distorted historical events Japan was teaching its children, especially those wartime atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre and the “comfort women” mainly from China and South Korea forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. Ienaga wrote the history accurately in his textbook entitled New Japanese History. But the Japanese Ministry of Education heavily censored it, removing references to the war crimes committed by Japan in neighboring Asian countries, including horrible atrocities done in China. The censored textbooks gave a distorted view of the history, often glorifying the acts of Japanese army during World War II. Ienaga fought back with multiple lawsuits over decades against the censorship on his book imposed by the Japanese Government. Ienaga wanted to hold fast to the truth and make sure a truthful account of the past was passed on to the next generation in Japan. Although he could not succeed in achieving much during his lifetime, he died honorably, leaving behind a legacy of telling the truth about the history of his own country.

During many visits to the Gwangju Memorial Cemetery in South Korea where the fallen heroes (once labelled criminals, rioters, or traitors by the South Korean government) were put to rest, I saw moving scenes year after year. Teachers brough their young students, some even as small as 5 years old, to the cemetery in Mays to pay respect to the victims of Gwangju Massacre. First, they brought the children to the Memorial Hall by the cemetery where the story of the Uprising was told in words, pictures and short films. At the Memorial Hall, they told the children what happened and answered their questions to make sure they understood thoroughly the historical truth they were learning. More importantly, teachers told the children that the horrible acts were committed by the troops of their own country, not any foreign powers. After that, they accompanied the children to the adjacent cemetery where they spent time collectively bowing and honoring those buried there.

We saw similar scenes for many years at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay. We saw year after year parents bring their children to the candlelight vigil. I saw my friend’s children at the vigil holding an umbrella and a candle with a paper cone around it in those rainy evenings. One of them, now in her twenties, told me that she saw many adults cry in one of those evenings! The June 4 commemorations at Victoria Park over the past 30 years have also been a collective experience of passing on the truth and memory from one generation to another. We all know why we commemorate events like that. Through remembering historical events, no matter how tragic or shameful they are, we collectively try to affirm our commitment to not letting such events repeat anywhere in the world. By remembering, we try to prevent the history from repeating. However, the June 4 evening was quite different this year. The Hong Kong Police Force which used to assist in crowd management at Victoria Park over the past 30 years were on the streets trying to stop people from gathering, as the authorities had banned the event beforehand. Many accounts of the police action were given and shared through social media. The world was watching these scenes in disbelief. A foreigner who used to take part in the vigil when she was in Hong Kong told me she could never imagine that Hong Kong would change so much within such a short period of time.

When the authorities in South Korean banned public commemorations of the Gwangju Massacre, people found their ways to memorialize it. For citizens, commemoration is not a political event, but a human act of solidarity and care. Human solidarity and care have no boundaries. In other words, it is humans who care about each other, although they may not be related to one another, or they are people living in different countries. Afterall, it is that love and care that makes us human. And through commemorations, we pass our memories to the next generation so the children would remember their parents cared about the lives, dignity, freedoms and democracy not of just their own, but also of others.

(Yan Kei, advocate for criminal justice reforms)

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