June 4 museum opens amid protests and threat of lawsuit

Supporters of the bloody June 4 crackdown in Tiananmen Square protested as the world's first permanent museum devoted to the 1989 democracy movement opened in Tsim Sha Tsui yesterday.

Despite the protests and threats of a lawsuit by the building's owners' corporation, museum organisers welcomed international media and people who saw the crackdown at first hand for the launch of the display.

The 800 square foot museum is on the fifth floor of Foo Hoo Centre, an office block on Austin Avenue. Visitors enter through what organisers describe as a "time corridor", a narrow passage intended to evoke the suppression the Beijing students felt.

At the heart of the museum is a two-metre statue of the Goddess of Democracy, like the one students built in Tiananmen. It also contains hundreds of documents, books and microfilms telling the story of the crackdown 25 years ago.

"The museum is for the martyrs who have sacrificed themselves for the June 4 movement. It also represents Hongkongers' struggle to uphold the truth," said Lee Cheuk-yan, chairman of the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, which is running the museum on an annual budget of about HK$800,000.

But the alliance is under pressure. The building's owners' corporation has vowed to sue it for violating the deeds by using its unit as a museum and bringing in large numbers of visitors.

And as Lee and guests welcomed local and international media - including camera crews from Japan and the Netherlands - protesters outside claimed the truth about the crackdown had been "distorted".