2021
June
04
Friday

Monitor Daily Podcast

June 04, 2021
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Ann Scott Tyson
Beijing Bureau Chief

Sometimes the most powerful messages are not shouted but whispered. They are hinted at, or even left unspoken, yet still conveyed.

Hong Kongers proved this today. 

For 30 years, the city held the biggest annual commemoration for those who died in China’s June 4, 1989, crackdown on pro-democracy protests centered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. A huge candlelight vigil attended by thousands in Victoria Park, it marked the only large-scale Tiananmen memorial on Chinese soil.

Over the past year, authorities have imposed harsh new measures, such as an anti-subversion law, aimed at snuffing out such events – and, it seems, public memories of Tiananmen in Hong Kong. They have jailed Hong Kong pro-democracy activists for attending earlier Tiananmen events, altered or censored textbooks and public broadcasts, and earlier this week closed a small museum dedicated to the movement.

Yet in the face of thousands of patrolling police and a ban on the Victoria Park gathering, Hong Kongers found subtle ways to remember those who fought for political freedoms and perished on June 4, 1989.

Hundreds flocked to churches for commemorative masses, promoted on posters with vague but nonetheless searing statements such as, “Let’s not forget history.”

Scattered around the city, groups gathered, some wearing black, the traditional color of Hong Kong protesters. In Mongkok and the shopping district of Causeway Bay, once locations of huge pro-democracy protests, scores of people beamed their cellphone lights and lit candles after dark.

“It’s more or less in Hong Kong people’s DNA now,” lawyer and organizer Chow Hang Tung told the BBC earlier. “I am willing to pay the price for fighting for democracy,” said Ms. Chow. She was arrested today in Hong Kong. 

Tiananmen activist Han Dongfang, who was almost killed in the Beijing crackdown 32 years ago, spoke of hope and light as he relaxed on a bench in Victoria Park today, despite the presence of dozens of police. 

Dressed in black, he told Reuters, “Today, I just feel like being here.”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman/AP
Students fill the gallery at the Idaho Statehouse in Boise April 26, 2021. Conservative politicians in 16 states have introduced legislation aimed at prohibiting concepts they cite as divisive and that they attribute to critical race theory. So far, bills have passed into law in Arkansas, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.

The Explainer

Dennis Owen/Reuters
Kamloops residents and First Nations peoples gather to listen to drummers and singers at a memorial in front of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia, on May 31, 2021, after the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, were found at the site last week.
Jingnan Peng/The Christian Science Monitor
Milesly Fernandez (left) and her two young children were displaced by an earthquake in Puerto Rico in January 2020. They relocated to the Boston area, where they had to “double up” with her brother. Here, the family is shown in their one-room space in March. A new Boston program recognizing couch-surfing families as homeless provided Ms. Fernandez with a voucher for her own apartment.

In Pictures

Avedis Hadjian
Stefano Coluccio specializes in making mirrors in the style popularized by Jan van Eyck in his 1434 painting, “The Arnolfini Portrait.” The first mirrors in Venice were produced in the 14th century.

The Monitor's View


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

A message of love

Hayaturrahmah/Antara Foto/Reuters
A Rohingya refugee girl, after a voyage of more than 100 days from Bangladesh, is seen at Kuala Simpang Ulim beach in East Aceh, Indonesia, on June 4, 2021. Of 90 people who embarked on the journey, 81 survivors now seek a place to stay – something that awaits coordination with the local government. More than 1 million Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim minority in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, now live in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us today and have a great weekend! On Monday, we’ll have a story from Jerusalem on the unlikely coalition that agreed on one thing: After 12 years under Benjamin Netanyahu, it is time for someone else to lead Israel.

Finally, a quick correction from Thursday’s article about The Sewing Machine Project: Comments originally attributed to Zaman International were in fact from Gigi Salka, director of Zaman’s B.O.O.S.T. training program.

More issues

2021
June
04
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