The Politics of Enforced Amnesia

Some diplomatic exchanges are as predictable as the changing of the seasons. The early days of June reliably bring one such ritual: a Western government, this time the United States, makes a statement about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and Beijing responds with performative outrage. This year was no exception to the well-rehearsed script.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio remarked that censorship could not erase the past, a statement of principle that Beijing’s foreign ministry promptly decried as interference. The response was swift and formulaic. A ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, accused the US of distorting historical facts and smearing China’s political system, insisting the government had long since reached a *"clear conclusion regarding that political turmoil that occurred in the late 1980s."

That "clear conclusion," of course, is a state-enforced narrative that sanitizes the deployment of tanks against student protesters. It is a version of history where a "counter-revolutionary riot" was quelled, with an official death toll of 200 to 300, a figure that stands in stark contrast to other estimates that run into the thousands. Within mainland China, this official history is the only one permitted, scrubbed from the internet and public discourse.

Yet, the most telling aspect of this annual dispute is not the rhetoric, but the reality on the ground. The true measure of Beijing’s position is found in Hong Kong, once the only place on Chinese soil where mass public commemoration was tolerated. The annual candlelight vigil in Victoria Park, a tradition for decades, has been extinguished by the national security law imposed in 2020.

This year, the park was saturated with police. Plainclothes officers patrolled the area, stopping and searching individuals. An activist, Chan Po-Ying, was led away by police for the simple act of carrying a yellow paper rose, a quiet symbol of remembrance now apparently deemed a provocation. The message is unambiguous: memory itself is being policed.

Beijing’s accusations of foreign interference ring hollow when its own actions demonstrate a profound fear of its people's memory. The presence of a 29-year-old man from the mainland, who travelled to Hong Kong simply to walk in the park and acknowledge the victims, suggests that no amount of official conclusions or police deployments can truly command forgetting. The state can enforce silence, but that is a very different thing from controlling what people choose to remember.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com