Hong Kong police on Sunday arrested around 20 people, mostly pro-democracy figures, including a later released opposition party leader, on the 34th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
The police moved into force this weekend in Victoria Park and its surroundings to intercept anyone suspected of participating in any form of public commemoration of the events of June 4, 1989.
For more than 30 years, tens of thousands of people have gathered each year in Victoria Park for a candlelight vigil in memory of the victims of Tiananmen. But in 2020, Beijing imposed a national security law in the former British colony to muzzle any dissent after the gigantic pro-democracy demonstrations of 2019.
On Sunday, League of Social Democrats official Chan Po-ying held a small LED candle – a prop often used at vigils commemorating June 4, 1989 – and two flowers. The police immediately arrested her before boarding her in a van.
Her party said she was released two hours later.
Alexandra Wong, a 67-year-old pro-democracy activist, was also arrested while holding up a bouquet of flowers in tribute to the victims of the 1989 crackdown, as was the journalist and former president of the Hong Journalists Association. Kong, Mak Yin-ting.
Another woman was arrested after shouting “Wave up candles! Cry 4/6!”.
Hong Kong police said on Sunday evening they arrested 23 people, aged 20 to 74, for “disturbing the peace”.
Dressed in black, a young man was carrying a book entitled “May 35” at the time of his arrest, another way of referring to the Tiananmen events that took place four days after May 31.
After being briefly interrogated, searched and then released, a woman told AFP with a shrug: “Everyone knows what day it is today”.
On Saturday, Hong Kong police had already arrested four people for “disorderly conduct on public roads” and “acts for seditious purposes”, and four others for “disturbing public order”.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a tweet on Sunday evening that he was “alarmed by reports of detentions” in Hong Kong, and called for the “release of” any person detained for exercising freedom of expression and peaceful assembly”.
In mainland China, all traces of the Tiananmen events have been erased by the authorities. History textbooks do not mention it and online discussions on this subject are systematically censored.
This year, Chinese police also monitored several landmarks of the rare anti-Xi Jinping regime that erupted last fall.
A large police force was deployed around the Sitong Bridge in Beijing, the scene of a demonstration at the end of November where a banner demanding more freedom had been unrolled.
– “maintaining this memory” –
Sunday evening, after dark, dozens of candles were visible behind the windows of the American consulate in Hong Kong.
In addition, commemorations were planned in Japan, Sydney, or even New York.
In Taiwan, around 500 people gathered in Taipei’s Freedom Square in the evening, chanting “Let’s fight for freedom, support Hong Kong”.
They placed candles drawing in the night the number 8964, a symbol of June 4, 1989.
“We should cherish the freedom and democracy we have in Taiwan,” Perry Wu, 31, said.
In London, around 200 people attended a satirical reenactment of the Tiananmen events, with women dressed in white representing the “Statue of Liberty” erected in 1989 by the students. The protesters, most of whom were from Hong Kong, then marched to the Chinese Embassy.
Among them, a 59-year-old poet from Sichuan (southwest China) says his family fled the country immediately after the events of 1989.
“The Chinese of my generation know what happened, but the younger ones, not really”, explains the man, who does not want to give his name, adding: “so their parents, their grandparents must maintain this memory”.
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04/06/2023 23:32:50 – Hong Kong (AFP) – © 2023 AFP