Hong Kong exiles seek to preserve democracy’s memory through Lennon Walls in Taiwan

Exiled Hong Kongers are looking to revive the city’s famed Lennon Walls in Taiwan to serve as powerful reminders of a democracy movement that Beijing has sought to erase, even as no commemorative events were allowed in their home soil to mark the sixth anniversary of Hong Kong’s massive anti-extradition protests.

“The Lennon Wall is an important collective memory for us (Hong Kongers),” said Hong Kong artist Kacey Wong, who moved to Taiwan’s Taichung city in 2021. “From 2014 to 2019, it was the place where we spread our democratic demands. Now the Lennon Wall and democracy and freedom in Hong Kong are gone.”

Hong Kong’s Lennon Walls – named after musician John Lennon’s peaceful activism and inspired by Prague’s Velvet Revolution of the 1980s – became iconic features of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, transforming public spaces into canvases for democratic expression.

Read more