Growing up in China, the fourth of June was a blank space on the calendar. It was a date carefully scrubbed from our history books and silenced by the state. I spent the first 18 years of my life inside a story the Party wrote for me. I recited 自由 (Freedom), 民主 (Democracy), and 平等 (Equality) the way children recite multiplication tables: sounds without meaning, slogans without soul. The words were given to us empty, and we were taught to be grateful for the emptiness.
Chevonne at the June 4th Tiananmen Massacre vigil in London, 2023
I never knew that 37 years ago tonight, a 17-year-old boy named Jiang Jielian (蒋捷连) was shot in the back and never came home. I never knew his mother, Ding Zilin (丁子霖), who turned her shattered grief into the Tiananmen Mothers, a fellowship of parents who, for over three decades, have done nothing more radical than refuse to forget their children’s names. Ding is nearly 90 now. Her phone lines have been cut from the outside world. She has fallen, broken ribs, struck her head. Still, she remembers. Still, she insists the dead be counted.
Mourners lighting candles at the June 4th vigil in London, 2023 (Credit: @lei_uk)
It wasn’t until I arrived in the UK that my world changed. At a June 4th vigil, standing in the soft, flickering candlelight, surrounded by strangers, I learned the truth about the students whose lives were crushed simply for daring to demand freedom. I wept for them, and I wept for the history that had been stolen from me. Unlearning everything you know about your homeland is a painful, isolating process. But heartbreak eventually turns into empathy, and action becomes the only remedy.
Displaying historical 1989 protest photos at the June 4th rally, 2023 (Credit: @han_zifei)
And as I looked at those flames, a terrifying clarity took hold: the tanks that rolled into Beijing on June 4th did not stop in Beijing.
Three months before Tiananmen, in March 1989, they had already placed Lhasa under martial law, shooting Tibetans in the streets. Decades later, that same hand reached into Hong Kong, wiping away Victoria Park’s beautiful sea of candles and replacing them with government-funded festivals staged, without shame, on the very ground of remembrance. Today, it darkens East Turkistan, tearing Uyghur families apart. It is one borderless shadow driven by a single fear: the power of memory.
Chevonne (left) protesting at the June 4th rally, 2022
Almost two years ago, I joined Students for a Free Tibet as Development Coordinator. SFT became the space where my isolated grief transformed into a global community unwilling to allow the regime to dictate the truth.
Working here has completed what that first vigil began. It has shown me that resistance is never about abstract political theories. It is a promise we make to our own souls, rooted in two values at the very heart of the human spirit.
Chevonne (left) and SFT members protesting for the Panchen Lama in New York, 2024
The first is conscience, 良知 (Liangzhi) or ལྷག་བསམ (Lhagsam), the stubborn refusal to accept a lie. It is what drove 17-year-old Jiang Jielian out of a window to face the gunfire, what drives Hong Kong political prisoner Chow Hang-tung (邹幸彤) to hunger-strike in her prison cell tonight, and what has kept Tibetans resisting over six decades of occupation.
But conscience needs a heartbeat, and that heartbeat is compassion, 慈悲心 (Cibei xin) or བྱམས་བརྩེ (Jamtse). This is the love that feels another’s pain as your own. It is the invisible thread connecting Ding Zilin’s thirty-seven years of unyielding grief to the silent, breaking heart of a Tibetan mother today whose child has been torn away to a colonial boarding school.
Protesters at the Tiananmen Massacre solidarity rally in London, 2024 (Credit: @han_zifei)
The regime is waiting us out, betting that grief has an expiration date and memory will dissolve. They are wrong. Conscience does not expire. For over six decades, the people of Tibet have proved that memory outlasts dictatorships, waking up every morning to shield a flame the Chinese government has spent decades trying to extinguish. They taught me what it looks like to keep the flame lit.
In amnesia lies the demise of democracy. In remembrance lies the only real resistance.
In unwavering solidarity,
Chevonne Wang
Development Coordinator
