More than 6,000 people attended this year’s commemoration event– the highest on record in the last decade. The New School for Democracy, alongside other human rights groups, held a candlelight vigil honoring victims of the Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre on Tuesday evening, June 4.
The Tiananmen Square incident was a violent crackdown by the Chinese authorities against a group of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, China June 4, 1989. This year was the 35th anniversary of the event, with the theme “Ideals are bullet-proof”. The event was marked by survivors sharing their stories, short speeches, silent prayer, and musical performances.
New School for Democracy Chairman Tseng Chien-yuan (曾建元) attributed the increased turnout to multiple factors, the first being the CCP’s self-proclaimed “punishment drills”-- conducted in the wake of President Lai Ching-te’s (賴清德) inauguration. The drills provoked a lot of dissatisfaction among the Taiwanese, who likely then found themselves drawn to such memorials.
Second is the large number of Hongkongers, both those living in exile and those who flew in just for the vigil. While Hong Kong once held its own vigil in Victoria Park, such displays have been suppressed since 2020 when pandemic-era restrictions were not lifted. This “legal suppression” has led many Honkongers to feel they are better able to protest on a larger scale elsewhere.
Finally, Tseng credits the momentum of the Bluebird Movement for the increase in young attendees– even noting some attendees in high school uniforms. The education, he said, has made a new more direct, and visionary generation than in the past.