Defiant Hong Kong residents quietly mark the anniversary of the 1989 crackdown
Hong Kong: Quietly, almost unnoticed, they arrived at Victoria Park on Hong Kong Island, just as they always did on the evening of June 4th.
The last event, held in 2019, drew more than 100,000 people to the park for an annual candlelight vigil commemorating China’s bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
There were only a few this year and you wouldn’t notice them unless you knew what to look for.
An elderly woman sat quietly on a park bench, scrolling through her phone, turning on the device’s flashlight. It’s not a candle, but a separate fluorescent beam pointed at the ground.
Nearby, a father was quickly pushing his toddler in a stroller with one hand and his phone in the other. The lighthouse is on. Additionally, a woman in her 20s who was walking in the park that evening was chatting with her friends and holding her phone with her palm open. The lighthouse is on.
The park around them was filled with uniformed and undercover police.
“I used to come here every year,” said a woman in her 60s who wanted to be known only as “C.”
Speaking in a hushed voice, she said she has maintained the ritual “to say goodbye to those who can’t meet us any more because of their sacrifices”.
“We’re grateful for what they did. We’re not allowed to do it publicly, but we still want to remember.”
Another person, dressed all in black with a hat and face mask, sat quietly on one of the park benches with his arms folded, staring straight ahead without blinking for several hours.
Black is the color associated with Hong Kong’s activist movement and had clearly aroused suspicion from the authorities. A plainclothes police officer wearing a headset was sitting on the bench next to him.
Thursday marked the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, when the Chinese military stormed Beijing’s famous square and turned its tanks and guns on peaceful student protesters demanding democratic reforms.
The death toll is disputed, but eyewitness accounts suggest the number ranges from a few hundred to more than 1,000 dead.
Meanwhile, as China tries to erase the incident from the country’s history books, government censors are meticulously deleting any references that appear on Chinese social media.
This year, Chinese officials told relatives of the victims that they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary, the Associated Press reported. A person with knowledge of the matter spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, the Associated Press reported. Amnesty International said relatives of the Tiananmen Mothers group have been visiting the graves for more than 30 years and reading commemorative leaflets while police stood guard.
The Hong Kong vigil was the only place on Chinese soil where the victims of Tiananmen could be publicly mourned.
The vigil, which was initially banned by authorities for Covid-19 safety reasons, never returned after Beijing imposed draconian national security laws on the city in 2020 following months of anti-government protests. These laws silenced opposition and put an end to political meetings.
Dozens of pro-democracy activists, political figures, government critics and journalists have been ensnared in the law and imprisoned on charges of subversion and sedition. The act of wearing a shirt with the slogan “provocative” resulted in an activist being sentenced to 14 months in prison.
Two of the vigil organizers, democracy activists Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung, were arrested in 2021 and are on trial for “inciting subversion” by encouraging an end to China’s one-party rule.
For the past four years, a food carnival hosted by pro-Beijing groups has occupied the vigil on June 4, showcasing cuisines and cultures from the mainland.
At his bookstore in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district, Derek Chu is determined that the significance of the June 4th anniversary is not lost. He wears a shirt emblazoned with the image of a “tankman,” the only protester who tried to block a column of tanks after the massacre, and distributes electric candles to anyone who wants one.
“Many people told me that I would get into big trouble if I kept giving away the candle lights, but I feel like this is one part I can’t give up,” says Chu, a former district councillor.
He adds: “Confronting authority or power lies in the courage of ordinary people. This is the meaning of the tank man.”
Australia’s consulate in Hong Kong, along with other Western countries, celebrated the anniversary on social media, while the US consulate displayed electric candles in its windows.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a statement in Chinese about X, saying that “no amount of censorship can erase the past” and that those who sacrificed themselves to defend freedom of expression and peaceful assembly “will one day be vindicated.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning responded by accusing the United States of denigrating China’s political system and “using so-called democracy and human rights as an excuse to interfere in China’s internal affairs.”
Leticia Wong, owner of the Hunter bookstore in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po district and former democracy advocate, said she decided to keep a lower profile than last year on the anniversary.
The devastating inferno that ripped through the city’s Wang Fuk Court complex last year, killing 168 people, has further compounded his confusion about the future.
“I’m more disappointed and more reluctant to know what to say,” but added: “I think as long as we’re still worried about disappearing, then Hong Kong is not going to disappear.”
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Lisa Visentin is the North Asia correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Beijing. He was previously a federal political correspondent in Canberra.Connect with: X or email.
