How China's communist dictatorship has just reminded the world who they really are

A man at a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong in 2020 holds a photograph of the famous 'Tank Man' standing in front of a column of Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in June 1989 (Picture: Anthony Wallace) | AFP via Getty Images

Every so often, China’s communist dictatorship reminds us who they are, whether by glowing praise for blood-soaked monster Vladimir Putin, aggressive military manoeuvres around Taiwan, an island they threaten to invade, or Draconian prison sentences imposed on democracy activists.

Now Albert Ho, 74, Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, and Chow Hang-tung, 41, have become the latest to be jailed, this time for between five and seven years.

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Their ‘crime’ was essentially organising peaceful vigils in commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in June 1989, when a mass student protest was brutally crushed by the so-called People’s Liberation Army. According to China, more than 200 people were killed; some Western estimates say thousands died.

A famous picture of a lone protester who stopped a line of tanks became an icon of the protest which was regularly displayed at memorial events in Hong Kong. No longer. Under the Beijing-imposed national security law, remembering the past is illegal in Hong Kong, just like the rest of China, if it makes the communists look bad, if it makes them look like who they truly are. We must never forget.

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