Hong Kong neck-and-neck with Florida in bookbanning competition.
Citing the danger of “unhealthy ideas” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee is defending the clandestine removal of library books about the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, which saw upwards of a thousand deaths (estimates vary). All of this as the 35th anniversary of the historic revolt/massacre approaches on June 4.
The discovery was made after a prominent political cartoonist – whose work often satirised Hong Kong’s relationship with mainland China – was suspended indefinitely from publishing in a mainstream newspaper, and had his books removed from the city’s libraries.
That prompted Hong Kong journalists to check the public library department’s database for books on other politically sensitive issues, including the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown, to discover dozens of titles and documentaries were missing.
This crackdown on politically inflected material has been underway for a while: according to some accounts, upwards of 40 percent of “political books” have been culled from Hong Kong’s libraries.
In other news, Ron DeSantis is attempting to ban pronouns.
