CONFIDENTIAL
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violence to the horror,
preserve their authority. As if to compound the octogenarians then mounted an elaborate campaign to deny the truth of what Hong Kong people had witnessed in their own homes.
propaganda
3.
Your predecessor's eighth visit to Hong Kong earlier this month gave him the opportunity to see for himself what effect these events have had on the people of Hong Kong. He encountered a community which has had its hopes shattered and its worst fears revived, and which is deeply pessimistic about the fate in store for it. That is why he experienced a degree of nervousness and disillusionment unsurpassed on any of his earlier visits, even during the most difficult periods of the Sino-British negotiations in 1984; why these feelings were expressed more openly and publicly than is usual in Hong Kong (never before have there been major demonstrations against a British Minister); and why they were accompanied by demands for Her Majesty's Government to provide a right of entry or abode in the UK for Hong Kong British nationals.
Hong Kong's Response to Events in China
4.
The student democracy movement in Peking, and its violent suppression on and immediately after 4 June, triggered public demonstrations on a scale unprecedented in Hong Kong's history. The most dramatic of these were:
a) On 20 May, protests against the imposition of martial law in Peking by some 40,000 people outside the offices of the New China News Agency (NCNA) in the middle of a severe typhoon;
b)
c)
On successive Sundays (21 and 28 May), demonstrations and marches by crowds conservatively estimated at over 500,000 without disturbances or violence of any
kind;
Following the military crackdown in Peking, a "day of mourning" on 7 June, during which a large proportion of the population either engaged in brief stoppages of work, wore black armbands, or flew black ribbons from their vehicles.
CONFIDENTIAL
/A chronology
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