Hong Kong authorities have raided the city’s Tiananmen massacre museum a day after arresting four members of the civil society group that ran it.

The raid is the latest act by police in a sweeping crackdown on dissent and civil society groups that do not toe a pro-Beijing line, and came on the same day 12 activists pleaded guilty over a banned Tiananmen vigil last year.

The June 4th Museum, which has for two years displayed information and historical items related to the massacre of student protesters in Beijing on 4 June 1989, is run by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which has been accused of foreign collusion under the national security law.

On Thursday morning police officers were pictured carrying dozens of blue metal tubs into the museum’s Mong Kok building. Local media filmed officers removing items and loading them into a truck, including exhibit display panels and large cardboard cutouts.

The museum first opened a permanent exhibit in 2014 and closed a little over two years later, reportedly due to pressure from the building’s owners. In April 2019 it reopened at a new location in Mong Kok.

But it has been shut since June, when police announced an investigation into claims it was operating without the appropriate licence, three days after it had opened a new exhibition attended by hundreds of people. At the time, the Alliance said it was closing to ensure the safety of the public and its staff, and that if it reopened it would be separated from the Alliance to operate independently.

Authorities have accused the 32-year-old Alliance, which also ran Hong Kong’s annual candlelit vigil, of foreign collusion. Four senior leaders – the vice-chair Chow Hang-tung and standing committee members Simon Leung, Tang Ngok-kwan and Chan To-wai – were arrested on Wednesday for refusing to hand over information about the group’s membership and finances.

The US and UK governments condemned the arrests. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the arrests were politically motivated and “a blatant abuse of power”.

The UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said the arrests were “another chilling demonstration of how the national security law is being used by Beijing to dismantle civil society and stifle political dissent in Hong Kong”.

The alliance had already scaled down in an attempt to protect itself from persecution. Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho are among numerous high-profile activists serving prison terms over their roles in the 2019 pro-democracy protests that roiled Hong Kong, and on remand for other charges.

At the time police raided the museum, a group of 12 people, including the former alliance vice-chair Ho, appeared in court, pleading guilty to charges relating to the 2020 vigil, which had been banned by authorities citing the pandemic.

“Why did [the Alliance] still continue to commemorate June 4? In short, it is due to the moral commitment and conscientious duty willing to be taken by the Hong Kong people,” Ho told the court during mitigation, according to local media.

“In the mainland, open discussion of June 4 has always been forbidden in the public arena … On the other hand, in this small city of Hong Kong, we speak as the conscience for the whole nation, protect the truth of history and the dignity of the people.”

Eight other people involved in the same case, including jailed Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai, and Alliance vice-chair Chow, had earlier pleaded not guilty, and their trial was set for 1 November, RTHK reported.

The two groups were among 25 people charged on August 2020 for charges relating to participating in an unauthorised assembly, when the banned vigil partially went ahead. Three others, including jailed activist Joshua Wong, were earlier sentenced to bet ween four and 10 months, while warrants are still outstanding for two activists who have since left Hong Kong – Nathan Law and Sunny Cheung.

By Shui-yin Sharon Yam and Alex Chow
Dr. Yam is a diasporic Hong Konger and an associate professor who teaches public advocacy and social movements. Mr. Chow is a Hong Kong activist in exile.

For nearly a quarter of a century, the Pillar of Shame has stood on the campus of Hong Kong University — a 26-foot-tall commemoration of the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Last month, the university ordered the pillar’s removal.

The order is a striking blow in the government’s ongoing campaign to erase the memory of the 1989 atrocity: First, it banned the candlelight vigil held annually on June 4, arrested the vigil’s key organizers and raided a museum that documents the history of the massacre. But this is about far more than a statue.

Along with the removal of the Pillar of Shame, political pressure from the government and university administrations has incapacitated two major university student unions. The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s union was forced to disband, and University of Hong Kong administrators withdrew recognition of its union and banned some of its members from campus.

These moves mark a potentially irreversible turning point in Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong. Whereas earlier phases targeted branches of dissent, these moves strike at the roots: Universities and student unions nourish activism and can fuel future mass mobilization against an authoritarian China.

When it ordered the removal of the Pillar of Shame from campus, the university administration demonstrated that Hong Kong’s higher education authorities appear to be doing the bidding of Beijing’s government, erasing its potential to cultivate future political leaders who would challenge China’s rule.

Uprooting civil organizations and shrinking the public space that preserves the memory and trauma of the 1989 Beijing uprising have effectively turned Hong Kong into another silent mainland city.

As educators and scholar-activists in the Hong Kong diaspora, we understand the grave implications of such moves.

The pillar has symbolized freedom of speech and freedom from fear for students, teachers and citizens of Hong Kong for decades. It was first erected in Victoria Park in 1997 to mark the eighth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre — the same year that sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned to Beijing, launching a tug of war between islanders and mainland autocrats over how the history of the 1989 pro-democracy movement and Hong Kong would be narrated.

After its initial exhibition, different universities in Hong Kong housed the Pillar of Shame until it was permanently installed on the campus of the University of Hong Kong in 1998.

Pro-democracy activists have for years rallied around the pillar to maintain the collective memory of the Tiananmen massacre, its pain and grief. Before the passage of the National Security Law in June 2020, Hong Kong was the only place in China that permitted such commemorative acts.

The pillar holds particular historical, political and cultural significance to Hong Kong’s students, who view the collective commemoration of June 4 as integral to the democratic future of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong’s universities have historically championed critical thinking, giving students and faculty the space to openly deliberate contentious political and moral issues and to examine state-sanctioned ideas and values. They have produced great intellectuals, activists and organizers deeply engaged in creating a more democratic political future (including one of us, Alex Chow, who was jailed for his role leading the 2014 Umbrella Movement pro-democracy demonstrations).

Every year, students from the University of Hong Kong have cleaned the pillar, paying special attention to the words engraved at the bottom: “The old cannot kill the young forever.”

Student unions, in particular, have served as launchpads for many activists.

Their power has long been recognized: During the Sino-British negotiations about Hong Kong’s future in the 1980s, the Chinese Communist Party viewed the student unions as an asset to help propagate the idea of returning Hong Kong to its motherland. After the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, student unions led the charge to cut ties with Beijing. In the past 10 years alone, student groups shepherded the 2012 anti-national education movement, the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the 2019 anti-extradition-bill movement.

Now university administrations in Hong Kong are punishing students for voicing dissenting views on campus. By abandoning their neutral role and dedication to free speech, the universities have gone from realms of political enlightenment to theaters of state surveillance and policing.

Taken together, the removal of the pillar and the incapacitation of the student unions amount to effectively uprooting Hong Kong’s civil society. Both academic and political freedoms suffer with their forced absence.

While it was only a matter of time before the government turned to target the foundations of the democracy movement, it has nonetheless been stunning to see how fragile the institutional infrastructures and the integrity of public institutions are in the face of pressure from the Chinese government.

The student unions at other universities on the island now are caught in a dilemma: Remaining vocal on Hong Kong’s political developments risks consequences, including extended jail time. Silence means the students’ organizations may not survive another year. Facing the risk of immediate imprisonment or suspension from study, many student leaders have resigned from their positions, paralyzing the unions.

This cannot spell the end of Hong Kong’s civil society.

It should be a warning for global academia.

Universities elsewhere should set up Hong Kong studies programs and offer haven to scholars and students who hope to study Hong Kong from afar. Given Beijing’s extensive global surveillance, researchers and teachers should enhance protocols to communicate with colleagues and students in Hong Kong safely.

These troubling developments also should drive a rethink of the movement itself. We need to look elsewhere to rebuild Hong Kong’s civil society, albeit in different forms.

President Biden raised concerns about the Chinese government’s practices in Hong Kong in a meeting last week with President Xi Jinping. Mr. Biden has offered temporary safe haven for Hong Kongers in the United States. Congress is considering humanitarian pathways, like the Hong Kong Safe Harbor Act and the Hong Kong People’s Freedom and Choice Act. Those can offer shelter abroad for members of civil society.

It may be hard to keep track of the many ways China is cracking down on Hong Kong. But this latest move cannot be ignored. The stakes — future leaders, freedom and accountability — are far too high.

Around 40 per cent of the banks registered to vote in Hong Kong’s legislative elections on Sunday are foreign-owned, including some partly owned by their respective governments, despite Beijing’s warning against interference by foreign forces in the “patriots-only” poll.

Forty-six of the 114 electors in the finance functional constituency are banks from Europe, North America and other parts of Asia, a review by HKFP of information from the Registration and Electoral Office has found. The constituency will elect one member of the new “patriots only” 90-seat Legislative Council.

Of the list of foreign-owned banking companies that are electors, eight are headquartered in the US, including banking giants JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

Other banks with a vote include Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Switzerland’s UBS. A total of 20 countries, and Taiwan, are represented on the list of banks that are registered electors.

The Bank of Taiwan is also among the electors, at a time of unprecedented cross-strait tensions.

The Legislative Council polls will be the first since Beijing’s sweeping electoral revamp, which has sharply reduced democratic representation. All candidates were screened through a multi-step process, led by government officials, to ensure that they are “patriots.”

Foreign governments hold partial ownership of a number of the financial institutions registered to vote. NatWest is more than 50 per cent owned by the British state. Commerzbank’s biggest shareholder is the German government, which owns 15 per cent.

‘China’s internal affair’

Despite the fact that foreign banks have long held votes in Legislative Council elections, Beijing leaders and Chinese state media in the run-up to the latest polls have repeatedly warned unspecified “western forces” to stay out of the process.

“Hong Kong’s election is China’s internal affair,” Pan Yundong, the deputy commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong, said on Wednesday. “We will not allow any foreign forces to make irresponsible remarks with their ulterior motives.”

State-run newspaper People’s Daily lambasted Lo Kin-hei, chair of the Democratic Party, calling him a “chess pawn of foreign forces” in a Thursday editorial for allegedly blocking party candidates from running in the elections.

The Democratic Party did not put forward any candidates after saying that no members had applied to run. Other traditional opposition parties also did not field candidates.

Most pro-democracy figures are behind bars, in self-exile abroad, have quit politics or are barred from running.

Beijing-led electoral overhaul

Beijing’s overhaul increased the number of seats in the Legislative Council from 70 to 90, but only 20 seats – belonging to the geographical constituencies – will be directly elected by the public compared to 35 previously.

The Election Committee, which consists of pro-Beijing loyalists, will vote for 40 members. The remaining 30 seats will be polled in close-circle elections by registered voters in special interest groups known as functional constituencies, such as the finance, tourism and education constituencies.

Two candidates are contesting the finance constituency this year, including the incumbent Ronick Chan, a Bank of China adviser. He is running against Owens Chan, a non-executive director at an Australia-based health and nutrition company.