A group of people gathered today to protest the reopening of a museum dedicated to the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, claiming the institution poses a fire hazard in its new location, and could even cause the building to collapse.
The June 4th Museum, operated by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, had only recently moved into the Ngai Wong Commercial Building on Mong Kok Road after being forced out of its former home by an allegedly politically motivated lawsuit in 2016. It is slated to officially reopen on Friday.
Today’s protest was the second in just a few days, RTHK reports, and came on the heels of a break-in earlier this month in which vandals damaged furniture and splashed water on electrical fixtures.
The protesters said they were members of the public, but maintained they were speaking out on behalf of the owners and tenants of Ngai Wong building, which they claimed would be at greater risk of fire — or worse — thanks to crowds of visitors.
But the museum alliance’s chairman, Albert Ho, said he believed the protest was merely political.
“There had been gatherings frequently held in the building, where members and churchgoers attend regularly,” he told RTHK. “There has never been such complaints that it would cause fire hazards or other hazards.”
Ho allowed that if crowds were indeed overwhelming, steps would be taken to limit them, and that the museum would adhere to all relevant safety codes.
Richard Tsoi, vice chairman of the alliance, told Coconuts HK today that he didn’t believe the protesters had any actual ties to the building.
“They certainly have a political motivation behind them,” he said.
Tsoi added that he had been to meetings of the building’s owners association and no concerns had been raised, and added that the protests would not affect the museum’s reopening.
Contact information for the building’s owners was not readily available as of press time.
Discussion of Tiananmen Square — or the “June 4 incident” as it is locally known — is not restricted in Hong Kong despite being strictly forbidden on the mainland, where the list of sensitive words, phrases, and even emoji banned from social media around the anniversary seems to grow each year.
Indeed, a decades-old Cantopop song containing veiled references to the massacre — in which hundreds of pro-democracy activists were killed by the People’s Army — was pulled from Apple Music in China just this month.
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