On 21 August, Lee Cheuk-yan (李卓人) and Chow Hang-tung (鄒幸彤), former leaders of a group that organized June Fourth vigils, were convicted of “inciting subversion” under the 2020 National Security Law.

For decades, tens of thousands gathered in Hong Kong to mourn those killed by the People’s Liberation Army in 1989, demanding accountability and democratic reform. For the victims’ families living under surveillance and enforced silence in mainland China, the candles in Victoria Park carried a simple and very powerful reassurance: what happened to your children has not been forgotten.

Yet, the court treated the group’s call to “end one-party dictatorship” as an attempt to undermine Communist Party rule, with the vigils part of that political project. The government is thus no longer simply suppressing commemoration of Tiananmen Square. It is policing the conclusions citizens are allowed to draw from that history.

Still, while Beijing may have banned an annual vigil, dismantled this group, and imprisoned its leaders, the worldwide commemorations continue, and testimony and historical records keep circulating, proving that the memory of June Fourth lives on.

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