Hong Kong’s Tiananmen massacre museum reopens online

Hong Kong, August 5 (ANI): A Hong Kong museum that commemorates the victims of China’s 1989 crackdown on protesters at Tiananmen Square re-opened online on Wednesday months after it was forced to shut down.

Last week, the Hong Kong Alliance that runs the museum was fined HK$8,000 for opening the museum without a proper licence. Taking to Twitter, the Hong Kong Alliance wrote, “The June 4 Memory & Human Rights Museum will officially open to the public on 4 August  2021.” On June 4, 1989, Chinese troops had entered Tiananmen Square in Beijing and fired on students gathered in the largest pro-democracy protests that the Communist regime never witnessed. The death toll ranged from several hundred to thousands.

The pro-democracy protests were suppressed as China had declared martial law and sent its military to occupy central parts of  Beijing. China, with the help of local authorities, has been ruling Hong Kong with an iron fist. Authorities have also begun clamping down on cultural expression. Initial steps have included the closing of exhibitions dealing with pro-democracy protests.

Last month, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region announced that censorship guidelines on the city had been expanded to cover “any act which may amount to an offence endangering national security”. The Hong Kong authorities have increasingly been relying on the China-backed National Security law, which provides them broad power to limit people’s political freedom and to arrest journalists at independent news outlets.

The law criminalises any act of secession (breaking away from China), subversion (undermining the power or authority of the central government), terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, with punishments of up to life in prison. (ANI)