Hong Kong’s Tiananmen Square museum marks 25th anniversary of protests

Having opened in April, the world's first museum dedicated to the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square has marked the 25th anniversary of the suppression of the protest.

Organisers of the June 4 Memorial Museum in the Tsim Sha Tsui district of Hong Kong hope to educate the millions of mainland tourists who visit Hong Kong each year.

The small museum sits on the fifth floor of a commercial building and opened after years of planning and fundraising by pro-democracy activists.

Its largest exhibit is the Goddess of Democracy statue located by the entrance - a replica of one created by the protesters in the days before the crackdown.

Copies of newspaper clippings, photos, videos and an interactive feature on the configuration of the protestors at Tiananmen Square, which went on for a month, are all on display. The centrepiece is a video of the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of activists personally affected by the protests, some of whom lost children or relatives in the crackdown.

Testimonies given in the clips go through the agony of losing a university-aged child, and the subsequent upset of being forced to lie about the way their children died.

The protests are still a taboo topic in mainland China but Hong Kong operates under a more liberal legal system.

Yesterday (4th June) saw the 25th anniversary of the Chinese army's violent suppression of the protests, leading to the deaths of hundreds of people.

11th June 2013 - MUSEUMS DRIVE ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION