This blog is authored by Zhou Fengsuo, former student leader on Tiananmen Square in 1989, currently Executive Director of Human Rights in China and President of Humanitarian China.
In the spring of 1989, as a student leader standing in Tiananmen Square, I encountered a man who had travelled from colonial Hong Kong to show support for our movement. It was the first time I had met someone from Hong Kong. In that moment of solidarity, I felt the invisible wall between us dissolve. Though we lived under vastly different systems, we were united by a shared yearning — for truth, for dignity, and for a future China that could embrace freedom.
That moment left a deep impression. Ever since the massacre of June 4, I have found myself in the same camp as countless Hong Kongers who refused to let the truth die. While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has worked relentlessly to erase the memory of Tiananmen — by censoring the internet, rewriting history, and jailing those who dare to remember — Hong Kong stood as the last beacon of collective remembrance on Chinese soil.
For over three decades, Victoria Park became sacred ground each year. Candlelight vigils honoured the dead and affirmed our refusal to forget. I was deeply moved to speak at one such vigil, standing beside brave citizens who had never wavered. Their courage reminded me that the dream we once shouted for in Tiananmen Square — freedom, democracy, rule of law — had not been extinguished.
Hong Kong didn’t just remember; it resisted. It passed the memory of 1989 from one generation to the next. That’s why the imposition of the National Security Law in 2020 was not only an attack on Hong Kong’s autonomy — it was an assault on historical truth itself. The CCP saw clearly that remembering Tiananmen was not just a matter of the past. It was a threat to their present.
But history is not so easily buried.
Zhou Fengsuo speaks at a 2025 Tiananmen Square commemoration event
in Toronto, Canada. (Zhou Fengsuo)
Even though the Tiananmen protests and massacre remain a deep source of trauma, they have also become a tremendous source of inspiration, healing, and hope. As one young activist told me, even though the 1989 protests ended in tragedy, they were something precious that binds us all — across regions, generations, and borders. That young activist is Zeng Yuxuan.
Zeng was a law student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong when she contacted me asking for a Tiananmen banner to be mailed to her. She wanted to use it to continue public remembrance in Hong Kong. For that simple, courageous act, she was arrested, spent four months in prison, and was then forcibly sent back to mainland China. Today, she is missing. Her fate remains unknown. But her bravery lives on.
Hong Kong has always nurtured heroes of conscience. Chow Hang-tung, like many others in Hong Kong’s fight for freedom, inspires me deeply with her unwavering commitment. A human rights lawyer and former vice-chair of the Hong Kong Alliance, Chow represents the best of Hong Kong’s moral tradition. For organising peaceful vigils in Victoria Park, she has been repeatedly arrested, stripped of her liberty, yet never her principles. She is, to me, the true daughter of Hong Kong. Her voice, even behind bars, still lights the path forward.
Chow once wrote, “Commemorating June 4 is our way of not surrendering.” That is the message we must now carry. With Victoria Park silenced and its mourners scattered, it falls to us in the diaspora to safeguard what Hong Kong protected for so long. From Taipei to Toronto, Berlin to New York, we light candles in defiance of enforced amnesia. We name the dead. We tell their stories. And we remember those like Zeng Yuxuan and Chow Hang-tung who carry the burden of memory under repression.
To remember June 4 is not only an act of mourning — it is an act of resistance. It is a refusal to let lies triumph over truth. The CCP may control the present, but it cannot dictate the past. Nor can it erase the bonds formed in Tiananmen Square or those renewed in Victoria Park.
On this 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, I remember that stranger from Hong Kong who came to Tiananmen in 1989. I remember the generations who stood together in Victoria Park. I remember Zeng Yuxuan’s fearless hope and Chow Hang-tung’s steadfast voice.
The spirit of Tiananmen lives on — in every flickering candle, in every act of remembrance, and in everyone who dares to speak the truth.
