Will HK candle protest be the last?

Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin contrasts the ways in which June 4, 1989, was remembered this year in different parts of China.

HONG KONG (JP): On June 4, 1996, in the whole of the vast expanse of China there was, as far as the outside world yet knows, only a single public protest on the seventh anniversary of the Beijing Massacre.

In Taiwan, the one part of China where there is a fair degree of real democracy, the intellectual and political Taiwanese separation from the mainland was underlined near the Taiwan Railway Station. There a mere 100 or so mainlanders publicly asserted their solidarity with those who died in Beijing in 1989.

But in Hong Kong, the slightly-democratic British colony, which is to be returned to China's control in 13 months, between 35,000 and 40,000 citizens bravely supported the annual candlelight protest meeting at Victoria Park near Causeway Bay.

They thereby peacefully testified both to their still simmering anger over the past and the present -- and to their deep-seated fears of the future.

The large crowd, in one of the highlights of a memorable night, was briefly addressed by China's leading democratic dissident, Wei Jingsheng.

Wei is currently serving another lengthy term somewhere in the Chinese gulag. Thanks to the miracle of video, he was seen on two large screens making a brief rejection of the current communist party line: "There is no such thing as different human rights (for different peoples). Human rights are universal. To say that human rights are different for people with yellow skin or dark hair is tantamount to reviving racism."

The three Chinas thus presented some stark contrasts in the ways they commemorated, or did not commemorate, the tragic end to the student-led Tiananmen demonstrations in April, May and June 1989.

Ironically, the communist government of China behaved in exactly the same underlying way as it did in 1989: it acted as if it was afraid of the people in whose name it presumes to govern China.

The enduring tragedy of the Tiananmen Spring in 1989 was not merely that so many lives were snuffed out in the massacre, but also that China's aging rulers simply could not, or would not, see that the huge demonstrations were actually a vote of confidence which they simply could not afford to ignore.

After all the horrors that communist rule had visited upon the long-suffering Chinese people, most notably the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, it was nothing short of a miracle that the discontents of 1989 found massive peaceful expression and, initially, a desire to change communist rule from within.

But the Chinese Communist Party's distrust of the people was too great for the CCP leaders to see this.

That CCP distrust of the people was on display yet again this year, as Tiananmen was once more flooded with uniformed police and plainclothes security men posing as tourists. The excessive security precautions, when no serious protests were likely, were another demonstration of overkill, born of the irrational fear that some massive popular demonstration could somehow appear from nowhere, threatening the regime.

What actually appeared was one lone woman carrying some flowers which she aimed to place on the Monument to the People's Heroes, where once, in 1989, the student demonstrators had their "command center".

She could have been allowed to place her flowers and depart. She could have been photographed doing so. The photos would have allowed many Chinese and foreigners to breathe a slight sigh of relief at a tiny display of CCP tolerance.

It was not to be. The ongoing distrust and fear of the people is too great. The woman was upended into the side-car of a police motorbike and driven away with only her legs visible.

We will never know her name. By now, unless she is a daughter of an influential cadre, the woman is probably having a terrible time in prison. She may not be free to walk into Tiananmen Square for a long time to come.

As far as can be seen, her's was the only dissenting gesture on June 4 in Beijing, or in China as a whole.

This unnatural but almost complete absence of public dissent is a sobering and worrying thought. (One aged man sitting cross- legged in Tiananmen Square was also removed by the police before he could indicate any dissenting action).

It is not hard to see why China's communist rulers distrust the people so. Their fear is self-creating. They have reduced China to such a drab and pervasive pattern of uniformity, they must know that it is unreal.

The only uniformity at the gathering in Hong Kong was when, at a word from the organizers, some 40,000 candles were thrust aloft by the crowd, thereby producing a glittering sea of waving lights.

Set against the background of Hong Kong's ever growing number of skyscrapers, this scene produced a picture which would glow on TV screens around the world.

The Hong Kong gathering was significant for several reasons. First, it was substantially larger than the previous year when between 20,000 and 25,000 attended. Many of the comments of those attending indicated that they were protesting the maladroit way in which China is handling Hong Kong's transition, as well as the Beijing Massacre.

As one entered Victoria Park there was a bamboo tower with colored sheets of paper tied all over it. On each sheet was written the name of an imprisoned dissident in China.

Second, the meeting followed what has become a traditional format. Songs and speeches were followed by the laying of a wreath at a temporary white cenotaph on which were inscribed the words "Martyrs For Democracy Live Forever".

There was the video in which Wei Jingsheng and other dissidents appeared and the events of 1989 were reprised. Then one of the organizers lit a freedom flame at the side of the stage. The candles were waved aloft to affirm what was said and sung.

A series of slogans were chanted in unison. Before the final songs, the petitions signed by all those arriving at the meeting were ceremonially burned at the freedom flame.

It all added up to a deeply moving experience, enlivened by pulsating music. One of the songs which echoed around the park was a new version of a song originally sung as a lament for the death of the People's Liberation Army soldiers on foreign battlefields.

The vibrant gathering was reminiscent of the emotional gatherings of like-minded dissent in the dying years of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines.

The tradition of the candlelight meeting is one that many in Hong Kong wish to sustain. Repeatedly the organizers pledged to do that. But many who attended the gathering did so because they feared that this might be their last chance to express their feelings on June 4. This time, next year, reversion to communist control will be only 26 days away.

Curiously, Victoria Park is due for a renovation which may mean that it will not be available for this meeting next June. This curious coincidence suggests one more British effort to appease China in the run-up to the handover.

So, throughout the proceedings the fear of future suppression was a constant refrain.

The organizers of this annual gathering are the elaborately titled "Hong Kong Alliance In Support Of The Patriotic Democratic Movement". The Alliance has helped many dissidents flee from China in the wake of the Beijing Massacre. The Chinese authorities regard it as a subversive movement.

Given the lengths to which the CCP is going to eliminate all dissents, the fears of suppression are realistic. The alliance anticipates that "China will tighten controls over Hong Kong to prevent the Hong Kong democracy movement from influencing that of China .... We will face reality with a crisis mentality."

What was new about this gathering was that the alliance gave 10 pledges in answer to the question, once posed by Lenin: what is to be done?

The contrast with 1989 was thereby emphasized. The students in Tiananmen Square were loosely united, vague, and lacking in clear objectives. The declarations of the Hong Kong alliance are so specific as to indicate the 1989 mistake by those espousing democracy will not be repeated.

Equally, the specific declaration by the alliance, that after Hong Kong's reversion it will be part of China's democratic movement, will probably encourage China to repeat its mistake: by trying to reduplicate in Hong Kong the uniformity it has "achieved" in China.

As I left Victoria Park, another lone woman gave me not flowers but a neatly printed Chinese poem. It ended by referring to the pledge China once made to let Hong Kong go on being itself:

"One Country, Two Systems' is supposed to be with us.

But the spirit of that promise has all but changed.

One question for you, sir.

How much sadness can you bear?

Sadness keeps draining into the ocean.

In the same way as people emigrate from Hong Kong."

For now, at least, this woman was still free to share her poem and her thoughts with the outside world, without any fear of arrest.