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On This Day 21 Years Ago

R1229924 (Medium)A flyer on the floor reads "Don't Forget June Fourth".
On this day every year I feel nostalgic, and actually rather depressed. Twenty-one years ago, this was the day when the massacre on Tiananmen Square took place. My Mum was my age then. Now I have lived to my Mum's age when she saw the massacre, but the wrong in the history has not be righted while the underprivileged Chinese people have to bear with the political backwardness which was pretty much why those brave protestors took to the street. They were eventually randomly shot dead, clubbed to death, run over by tanks or executed by their government; those lucky ones were jailed; the even luckier ones are still living, with the wounds unhealed.
Every year this day, Hong Kong puts up its beautiful face with the yearly vigil in memory of the massacre and the dead. Tonight 150,000 people took part in the vigil. Back from it, I am too tired to put all the photos in one post. Here are some I took tonight.

RIMG8559 (Medium) "Redress the official assessment of June Fourth"

R1229932 (Medium)I love democracy

RIMG8560 (Medium) June Fourth – the continuing oppression

RIMG8563 (Medium) A performer remembers the incident in a special way.

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Crowds going to the rally

RIMG8580 (Medium)The new statue of Goddess of Democracy – the icon of the 1989 movement.

RIMG8573 (Medium)The original Goddess of Democracy – this one is a replica of the fallen statue on the Tiananmen Square in Beijing when the tanks moved in

RIMG8575 (Medium)

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RIMG8585 (Medium)A monument to honour the dead ones killed 21 years ago.

RIMG8582 (Medium)An old lady is tiding up the wreath . The Chinese characters read "Redress the official assessment of June Fourth".

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The sculpture evokes the memory of those of us who saw the night of the massacre on site, on the TV and in the newspapers.

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