Last week, the Hong Kong government blocked a website dedicated to the memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. This is just the latest attack on freedom of expression in Hong Kong directed by mainland China.
For years, Hong Kong commemorated the Tiananmen Square massacre—a peaceful demonstration, where hundreds of pro-Democracy protesters were killed by the Chinese army on 4 June 1989. This year’s remembrance, however, was cancelled and its planners jailed. The museum associated with the protest was shuttered weeks ago by police. And now the museum’s website has been blocked, with chilling effect on the people of Hong Kong. This is just the latest restriction imposed by mainland China. In January, an anti-government website, HKChronicle, was blocked. In June, another pro-democracy website had been blocked for a while (but has since been restored). Recently, Radio Television Hong Kong announced changes to its investigative journalism to become less critical of the government. And now the Hong Kong government is adding new offenses to its infamous security law.
China is moving away from the “one country, two systems” deal brokered with Britain when Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. Hong Kong’s constitution is supposed to protect freedom of expression, but that is often an early casualty under any authoritarian regime. Hong Kong is being made to conform with mainland practices, and on the mainland, Tiananmen Square is barely mentioned. Each year, in the days leading up to 4 June, images of candles on the internet are redacted, activists are detained, and parents who lost children in the crackdown are forbidden to mourn publicly. The event has even been scrubbed from school textbooks.
Internet censorship will continue to be a major blow to Hong Kong’s autonomy. As the mainland extends The Great Firewall (internet controls) around the island province, the city will be subsumed into the mainland’s way of life. China merely had to wait until the time was ripe.
Source: Theodora Yu, “Tiananmen Website is Blocked in Hong Kong,” Washington Post, 3 October 2021, A23; see also https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-tiananmen-hongkong-museum/2021/09/30/6d37d08e-2192-11ec-a8d9-0827a2a4b915_story.html
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