Police had to return to the location of a newly reopened museum commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre yet again on Saturday to shoo away five suspicious men who had plunked themselves down in the hallway in an apparent effort to discourage people from going inside.
Apple Daily received a video from the June 4 Museum’s operators — the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China — showing five men sitting in the hall just outside the museum on plastic stools they brought themselves and refusing to move, maintaining that the narrow corridor on the 10th floor of the Ngai Wong Commercial Building was a public place.
One of the men — wearing a t-shirt featuring of the face of “the father of the nation,” Sun Yat-sen — told a member of the museum’s staff recording the incident not to “kick up a fuss” about the obstruction, which was pretty rich given the men were there specifically to kick up a fuss about the museum, and which only got richer after he quickly began swearing at the worker.
The museum has been plagued by harassment since it settled on its new location after being ousted from its former home back in 2016.
First, there was a break-in at its new premises at the beginning of April that saw vandals destroy furniture and splash water on electrical fixtures. Then, a series of protests were held outside the building in the run-up to its official reopening, with demonstrators claiming that the museum posed a fire hazard. Finally, the official reopening ceremony on Friday saw even more protests, as well as a bogus call to firefighters claiming the museum had a gas leak.
In light of the harassment, the Alliance has stepped up security measures at the museum, including installing CCTV cameras, only admitting visitors who register for a pass at the security guard’s desk, and increasing the number of volunteers to watch over the museum during opening hours.
According to Apple Daily, the volunteers are equipped with walkie-talkies and stationed at the entrance of the building so that they can notify those inside of any possible troublemakers.
Speaking to the newspaper over the weekend, the Alliance’s vice chair, Richard Tsoi, said a volunteer spotted a small group of people standing outside the museum and alerted those inside. Around that time, five of the suspicious people went into the building, took the elevator to the 11th floor, and then took the stairs down one floor to the museum in an apparent effort to avoid having to get visitor passes from the downstairs guard.
Museum staff and security told the five men to leave the premises as they were blocking the corridor and informed them that it was not, as the men claimed, a public space. When the five men still refused to leave, the police were called to the premises. However, police declined to arrest the five, instead taking down their names and ordering them leave.
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