Hong Kong police yesterday detained one of the organizers of the annual vigil commemorating Beijing’s Tiananmen Square Massacre, as authorities sought to prevent any show of pro-democracy on the anniversary.
About 7,000 officers were placed on standby to stamp out any attempt to hold a mass candlelight vigil that Hong Kongers have attended in their thousands each anniversary for the past three decades.
The first arrest came early yesterday morning when lawyer Chow Hang-tung (鄒幸彤), one of the few remaining prominent democracy campaigners not already in jail or in exile, was detained by four police officers outside her work.
Photo: AFP
Chow, 37, is one of the vice chairs of the Hong Kong Alliance, which organizes the annual vigil.
Police confirmed that two people — Chow and a 20-year-old male — had been arrested on suspicion of publicizing an unlawful assembly through social media posts.
“Their online remarks involved advertising and calling on others to participate or attend banned public activities,” Hong Kong Police Senior Superintendent Law Kwok-hoi (羅國凱) told reporters.
Photo: Bloomberg
Huge crowds have traditionally gathered in Hong Kong to mark the anniversary of Chinese troops crushing peaceful democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. Hundreds were killed in the crackdown, by some estimates more than 1,000.
Under a “one country, two systems” policy that was meant to give Hong Kong more freedoms, the territory was the only place in China where large-scale commemorations were tolerated, and the huge crowds massed each year in Victoria Park.
Authorities banned this year’s gathering citing the COVID-19 pandemic — although Hong Kong has not recorded an untraceable local transmission in more than a month.
Last year’s vigil was also denied permission because of the pandemic, but thousands defied the ban and rallied inside the park anyway.
Police threw cordons around Victoria Park, keeping crowds out and leaving the venue free of candle-carrying mourners for the first time in 32 years.
People who approached the park were stopped and searched, while officers used loud hailers and signs to call for people to disperse from nearby streets.
Some officers displayed signs warning chanting crowds that they were in breach of Hong Kong’s National Security Law, which Beijing imposed last year to stamp out dissent.
At the University of Hong Kong, students took part in an annual washing of the Pillar of Shame sculpture, which was erected to remember the victims of the Tiananmen crackdown. Charles Kwok (郭永皓), the president of the students’ union, said the event was legal.
“In cleaning the Pillar of Shame, we shall learn how our predecessors defended the freedom of expression before, and we shall not easily give up,” Kwok said.
Unable to muster en masse, many Hong Kong residents still found other ways to mourn the dead.
At 8pm — the time when candles are traditionally lit — some residents shone mobile phone lights in the districts of Causeway Bay and Mongkok, according to reporters at the scene.
Others produced candles and lit them where they stood, while some attended memorials at churches across the city that said they would open their doors to mourners.
“I used to commemorate June 4 at Victoria Park, but this year it is not safe to go to there,” a 35-year-old office worker, who gave her name as Beth, said outside a Catholic church in Sai Wan Ho district.
“I am not Catholic, I usually never attend mass or go to church. I just want to be part of this special occasion and commemorate because I think it is important,” she added.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for “a full accounting of all those killed, detained, or missing.”
Additional reporting by AP
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