World
After crackdown on Hong Kong, overseas communities carry the torch to keep Tiananmen memories alive
HONG KONG (AP) — As the 35th anniversary of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square crackdown neared, Rowena He, a prominent scholar of that bloody chapter of modern China’s history, was busy flying between the United States, Britain and Canada to give a series of talks. Each was aimed at speaking out for those who cannot.
The 1989 crackdown, in which government troops opened fire on student-led pro-democracy protesters, resulting in hundreds, if not thousands, dead, remains a taboo subject in mainland China. In Hong Kong, once a beacon of commemorative freedom, the massive June 4 annual vigil that mourned the victims for decades has vanished, a casualty of the city’s clampdown on dissidents following huge anti-government protests in 2019.
He was still reeling from the loss of her academic position after Hong Kong authorities last year rejected her visa renewal, widely seen as a sign of the financial hub’s decline in intellectual freedom. Despite the exhausting schedule of talks, the former protester in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in 1989 viewed this as her duty.
“We cannot light the candles in Hong Kong anymore. So we would light it everywhere, globally,” she said.
As Beijing’s toughened political stance effectively extinguished any large-scale commemorations within its borders, overseas commemorative events have grown increasingly crucial for preserving memories of the Tiananmen crackdown. Over the past few years, a growing number of talks, rallies, exhibitions and plays on the subject have emerged in the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and Taiwan.
These activities foster hope and counteract the aggressive efforts to erase reminders of the crackdown, particularly those seen in Hong Kong. In 2021, the city’s police charged three leaders of the group that organized the vigil with subversion under a 2020 sweeping national security law that has all but wiped out public dissent. Later, the group voted to disband. Tiananmen-related statues were also removed from universities.
Last week, under a new, home-grown security law, Hong Kong police arrested seven people on suspicion of alleged sedition over their posting of social media content about commemorating the Tiananmen crackdown. A Christian newspaper, which typically publishes content related to the event ahead of its anniversary, left its front page mostly blank. It said it could only turn words into blank squares and white space to respond to the current situation.
On Tuesday, the park that used to hold the vigil will be occupied by a carnival held by pro-Beijing groups.
However, attempts to silence commemorative efforts have failed to erase the harrowing memories from the minds of a generation of liberal-minded Chinese in the years after tanks rolled into the heart of Beijing to break up weeks of student-led protests that had spread to other cities and were seen as a threat to Communist Party rule.
He, who was 17 years old at the time, recalls that protesters like her took to the streets out of love for their country. When the crackdown happened, she spent the entire night in front of her TV, unable to sleep. After she returned to school, she was required to recite the official narrative — that the government had successfully quelled a riot — in order to pass her exams.
“I never killed anyone. But I lived with that survivor’s guilt all those years,” she said.
To preserve memories of the event, a museum dedicated to the Tiananmen crackdown opened in New York last June. It features exhibits such as a blood-stained shirt and a tent used by student protesters.
A similar museum operated by vigil organizers was shuttered in Hong Kong in 2021.
As of early May, its board chair Wang Dan, also a leading former student leader of the Tiananmen protests, estimated the New York museum attracted about 1,000 people, including Chinese immigrants, U.S. citizens and Hong Kongers. To expand its audience, Wang said he plans to organize temporary exhibitions on university campuses in the U.S., and possibly in other countries over the longer term.
He said overseas memorial events are crucial because mainland Chinese and Hong Kongers can see overseas memorial activities online.
“It can have an effect in mainland China because young people there all know how to use VPNs to circumvent internet censorship,” he said.
Aline Sierp, a professor of European history and memory studies at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, said overseas commemorative activities allow the memories to travel and endure, providing access for other people and future generations.
But she said it can be “a double-edged sword” because adapting the memories to new places might risk fragmenting or de-contextualizing them in the future.
Alison Landsberg, a memory studies scholar at George Mason University in Virginia, said that overseas efforts carry the potential to inspire people from other places who are facing their own challenges in the pursuit of democracy.
To carry the memories forward, film and television dramas can be powerful tools for people to take on memories of events through which they didn’t live, she said.
She said overseas theater productions about the crackdown, which began last year in Taiwan and continued in London this year, have a greater possibility of making those connections and potentially reaching a broader audience.
“When you have a dramatic narrative, you have the capacity to bring the viewer into the story in a kind of intimate way,” Landsberg said.
Last week, members of an audience at a London theater were visibly moved, some to tears, after watching the play “May 35th,” a title that subtly references the June 4 crackdown.
The play, produced by Lit Ming-wai, part of the Hong Kong diaspora who moved to the U.K. after the enactment of the 2020 security law, tells the story of an elderly couple who wish to properly mourn their son who died in 1989.
Its director, Kim Pearce, who was born in the U.K. in the 1980s, said the tragedy had resonated with her from a young age and she was once moved to tears when she read the poem “Tiananmen” by James Fenton. Working on this project, she said, has further deepened her connection to the stories.
British theater-goer Sue Thomas, 64, also found the play deeply moving. “Particularly as a parent myself now, which I wasn’t then, which sort of made me think of it in a much more sort of heartfelt way,” she said.
At the theater, He, the scholar, served as one of the post-show speakers, sharing her struggles and the motivations behind her work with the audience. She said the play was so powerful that it made her relive the trauma of the past 35 years, leaving her in tears and causing her to lose her contact lenses.
“It shows that how much sufferings that people had to endure all these years,” she said. “If there’s anything we can do, I hope that we would bring the younger generation to understand this.”
___
Ji reported from London.
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices rose in early trading Sunday as a standoff between Iran and the U.S. prevented tankers from using the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf waterway that is crucial to global energy supplies.
The price of U.S. crude oil increased 6.4% to $87.90 per barrel an hour after trading resumed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The price of Brent crude, the international standard, climbed 5.8% to $95.64 per barrel.
The market reaction followed more than two days of lifted hopes and dashed expectations involving the strait. Crude prices plunged more than 9% Friday after Iran said it would fully reopen the strait, which it effectively controls, to commercial traffic.
Tehran reversed that decision and fired on several vessels Saturday after President Donald Trump said a U.S. Navy blockade of Iranian ports would remain in effect. On Sunday, Trump said the U.S. attacked and forcibly seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that allegedly tried to get around the blockade. Iran’s joint military command vowed to respond.
Sunday’s higher prices wiped out much of the declines seen Friday, signaling renewed doubts about how soon ships will again transport the vast amounts oil the world gets from the Middle East.
The US-Israeli war against Iran, now in its eighth week, has created one of the worst global energy crises in decades. Countries in Asia and Europe that import much of their oil from the Gulf have felt the most impact of halted supplies and production cuts, although rapidly rising gasoline, diesel and jet fuel prices are affecting businesses and consumers worldwide.
Asked when he thought U.S. motorists would again see gas cost less than $3 a gallon on average, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said prices at the pump might not go down that much until next year.
“But prices have likely peaked, and they’ll start going down,” Wright told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
The price of crude oil — the main ingredient in gasoline — has fluctated dramatically since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, and as Iran retaliated with airstrikes on other Gulf states. Crude traded at roughly $70 a barrel before the conflict, spiked to more than $119 at times, and previously closed Friday at $82.59 for U.S. oil and $90.38 for Brent.
Industry analysts have repeatedly warned that the longer the strait is closed, the worse prices could get.
A fragile, two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is set to expire Wednesday, while escalating tensions in the Strait of Hormuz puts the fate of new talks to end the war into question.
Even if a lasting deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz emerges, analysts say it could take months for oil shipments to return to normal levels and for fuel prices to go down. Backed-up tanker traffic, shipowners concerned about another sudden escalation, and energy infrastructure damaged during the war are factors that could impede production and shipment volumes from returning to pre-war levels.
A gallon of regular gas cost an average of nearly $4.05 a gallon in the U.S. on Sunday, according to motor club federation AAA. That’s about 8 cents lower than a week ago, but far higher than $2.98 before the war.
Trump warns Iran it ‘can’t blackmail’ US with Hormuz closure
Fox News reports on heightened tensions in the Middle East as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard reaffirms strict control over the Strait of Hormuz and fires on passing ships. President Donald Trump, speaking from the Oval Office, states the US naval blockade will remain in full force. White House correspondent Alex Hogan provides updates on the escalating diplomatic and military standoff.
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Hundreds of commercial tankers are stranded on both sides of the Strait of Hormuz after Iran shut the critical chokepoint on April 18, halting traffic and leaving crews trapped amid reports of gunfire and “traumatic experiences” on board.
The Strait of Hormuz is considered an international waterway under international law, through which ships have the right of transit passage, according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through the Strait of Hormuz, making it a critical chokepoint for global energy markets, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said Iranian gunboats opened fire on a tanker the same day, while a projectile struck a container vessel, damaging cargo.
STARMER AND MACRON ACCUSED OF ‘PLAYING AT BEING RELEVANT’ WITH STRAIT OF HORMUZ PLAN
U.S. Central Command said Tuesday that “U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers are among the assets executing a blockade mission impacting Iranian ports.” (CENTCOM)
Audio released by maritime monitoring group TankerTrackers appears to capture the moment a vessel and its crew came under fire while approaching the strait, including a distress call from a crew member.
“Sepah Navy! Motor tanker Sanmar Herald! You gave me clearance to go… you are firing now. Let me turn back!” the crew member can be heard saying in the recording, according to TankerTrackers.
Iranian state media confirmed that shots were fired near vessels to force them to turn back, while the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India said the foreign secretary was deeply concerned.
Hapag-Lloyd, the world’s fifth-largest container shipping line, told Fox News Digital that it had activated a crisis team as its crews remain stuck on board vessels in the region.
“We have been working from Friday afternoon until today with the entire crisis team to bring the vessels out — in vain, unfortunately,” said Nils Haupt, senior director of group communications at Hapag-Lloyd AG.
“These events can easily lead to traumatic experiences. There is also a significant risk from sea mines, which has made insuring vessels for passage through the Strait nearly impossible.”
LISA DAFTARI: HORMUZ WHIPLASH PROVES TEHRAN CAN’T HONOR ANY DEAL IT SIGNS
“The crews are well, but they are becoming increasingly impatient and frustrated. It is very unfortunate that we could not leave today,” he added. “Many ships are still stuck in the Persian Gulf.”
“Our six ships are anchored near the port of Dubai, and all crews hope for an improvement in the situation,” Haupt said.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on April 18 that the strait would remain closed until the U.S. lifts its blockade on Iranian ports, warning ships not to move from anchorage or risk being treated as “enemy” collaborators.
Iran has previously argued that restrictions on its oil exports and shipping amount to “economic warfare,” framing actions in the Strait of Hormuz as a response to foreign pressure on its economy, according to statements from Iranian officials and state media in past incidents.
“Approaching the Strait of Hormuz will be considered cooperation with the enemy, and any violating vessel will be targeted,” the IRGC said in a statement carried by the semi-official Tasnim News Agency.
TRUMP ORDERS A BLOCKADE IN THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ AS TENSIONS WITH IRAN SOAR
Fishing boats dot the sea as cargo ships, in the background, sail through the Arabian Gulf toward the Strait of Hormuz off the United Arab Emirates, Friday, March 27, 2026. (AP Photo)
The United States imposed the blockade on Iranian ports to pressure Tehran to reopen the strait, with U.S. Central Command saying the measures are being enforced “impartially against all vessels.”
Hapag-Lloyd said its vessels have been stuck for weeks following the initial closure after the outbreak of war with Iran on Feb. 28.
“For us, it is critical that our vessels can pass through the strait soon,” Haupt said.
“We offer all crew members unlimited data so they can video call loved ones and access entertainment. Crews are strong, but after weeks on board there is growing monotony and frustration.”
“One crew experienced a fire on board from bomb fragments. Others have seen missiles or drones near their vessels,” he added.
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“They are resilient, but each additional day makes the situation more difficult, more monotonous, and more stressful.”
President Donald Trump said Iran had agreed not to close the strait again but after the closure, Trump called the situation “blackmail” and said the U.S. would not back down.
Shops and schools shut in northern Israel as residents protested a 10-day ceasefire with Lebanon that took effect on April 16, saying “nothing was achieved”. Israeli officials say operations may continue, with forces still deployed inside southern Lebanon.
Published On 19 Apr 2026
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