HONG KONG (TIP): As the 34th anniversary of China‘s Tiananmen Square crackdown approaches on June 4, many in Hong Kong are trying to mark the day in private ways in the shadow of a law that prosecuted leading activists in the city’s pro-democracy movement.
For decades, Hong Kong was the only place in China where people held large-scale commemorations about the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in which tanks rolled into the heart of Beijing and hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people, were killed.
People gathered in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park annually to mark the June 4 anniversary with a candlelight vigil.
In 2020, thousands defied a police ban to hold the event.
This Sunday, Victoria Park will be occupied instead by a carnival organised by pro-Beijing groups to celebrate Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese rule in 1997.
Organisers say it will feature a bazaar with food from across China.
As the government arrested activists, publishers and opposition politicians under the sweeping 2020 National Security Law, public shows of the opposition have mostly vanished. As authorities erase reminders of the massacre, some Hong Kongers are fighting to keep memories alive by distributing LED candles, writing about the crackdown, or buying books about it. In previous years, Richard Tsoi, a former vigil organiser, would have been having a busy week, preparing for the event and coordinating with police.
This year, the 55-year-old says he has not decided what he’ll do on Sunday.
“Over some 30 years, we carried on our work in a struggle of memory against forgetting,” said Tsoi, who wore a black T-shirt with the slogan “The people will never forget.” “Now, maybe we will have to think about how to keep this message from being drowned out in Hong Kong.” Asked whether it is legal to mourn the crackdown in public privately, Hong Kong leader John Lee said that if anyone breaks the law, “of course the police will have to take action.”
The group that formerly organised the Victoria Park vigil disbanded in 2021, after police informed it that it was under investigation for working on behalf of foreign groups, an accusation the group denied, and three of its leaders were charged with subversion. The Tiananmen crackdown left a deep mark on a generation of liberal-minded Chinese people. Tsoi, who was in college during the 1989 democracy movement, said the protests gave him hope for the future of China. (AP)