Hong Kong prosecutors are seeking to confiscate more than 1,000 books, historical records, documentaries and memorial objects linked to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, prompting jailed activist Chow Hang-tung to accuse authorities of trying to erase the city’s historical memory.
Chow, a former vice chairwoman of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, said the proposed confiscation goes far beyond the conduct for which the group and its leaders were convicted of inciting subversion.
Chow says confiscation targets historical memory
The list includes books about the June 4 crackdown, biographies and historical works concerning former Chinese Communist Party leaders Zhao Ziyang, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, political and human-rights books, poetry collections and more than 1,000 other books, according to Chow’s account reported by Hong Kong outlet The Collective.
Prosecutors are also seeking newspaper clippings documenting China’s 1989 democracy movement, editions of the Hong Kong Alliance’s newsletter dating from 1989 to 2019 and audiovisual material including testimony from relatives of June 4 victims, documentaries, photographs and democracy-movement songs.
Other items include hundreds of phone straps printed with the words “democracy, human rights, freedom, rule of law and peace,” thousands of “Never Forget June 4” badges, Goddess of Democracy statues and other memorabilia.
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Chow argued that much of the material was never used as evidence at trial, describing some of it as little more than a “trophy” swept up during police raids. A translation of her Sept. 9 statement published by Brian Kern/Kong Tsung-gan detailed the items prosecutors want confiscated.
She said she feared the collection could ultimately wind up in an “incinerator or a landfill.”
“Just imagining more than a thousand books going up in flames” was painful, Chow wrote, particularly rare works and records preserving testimony about the Tiananmen crackdown.
‘Pillar of Shame’ also at risk
Among the most prominent objects is the Pillar of Shame, Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt’s eight-meter memorial to those killed during the 1989 crackdown.
The sculpture stood at the University of Hong Kong for more than two decades before the university removed it in December 2021. National security police seized it in 2023 in connection with the Alliance case, according to the South China Morning Post.
Chow questioned how prosecutors could justify confiscating the sculpture as part of the Alliance case, particularly because she said it was not originally seized during the investigation of the group.
Galschiøt, who maintains that he owns the sculpture and merely loaned it for display in Hong Kong, has separately asked the court to return it. “I claim the sculpture,” he wrote in a letter reported this month, adding that he did not consent to its confiscation or destruction.
Chow argued that the convictions concerned the Alliance’s post-July 2020 campaign to “end one-party dictatorship,” not the preservation of historical material about Tiananmen.
Hong Kong’s High Court convicted the Alliance, Chow and former chairman Lee Cheuk-yan on Aug. 21. Former vice chairman Albert Ho had pleaded guilty earlier. The Hong Kong government said the group’s campaign sought to undermine Communist Party rule and that the defendants’ actions endangered national security.
Activists sentenced as international criticism continues
The case has drawn criticism from foreign governments and human-rights groups.
Britain’s government said after the convictions that the case demonstrated that “even peaceful acts of remembrance” were being treated as national-security threats. Indo-Pacific Minister Baroness Winterton said in an Aug. 21 Foreign Office statement that the use of the National Security Law to restrict peaceful expression undermined commitments made under the Sino-British Joint Declaration.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council similarly called the convictions political persecution. In an official statement, the council said the Alliance had spent decades peacefully commemorating June 4 and pursuing democracy and freedom, and called for those detained in the case to be released.
Hong Kong authorities reject accusations that the prosecutions are politically motivated. Chief Executive John Lee said after the convictions that the defendants had endangered national security and that their “conspiracy was abundantly clear.”
On Sept. 11, the court sentenced Chow to seven years and three months in prison, Lee to seven years, and Ho to five years and two months, according to Reuters and The Associated Press. The Alliance itself was fined HK$1.5 million.
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