HONG KONG —
Hong Kong authorities strove on
Saturday to stop any public commemoration of the 33rd anniversary of the
Tiananmen crackdown, with police warning gatherings could break the law as
China vies to remove all reminders of the deadly event.
اضافة اعلان
On June 4, 1989,
Beijing sent troops and tanks to
break up peaceful protests, crushing demonstrations calling for political
change and curbs on official corruption. Hundreds, by some estimates more than
1,000, were killed in the crackdown. Discussion of what happened is all but
forbidden on the mainland.
Semi-autonomous Hong Kong had been the one place in
China where large-scale remembrance was still tolerated — until two years ago
when Beijing imposed a national security law to snuff out dissent after huge
pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Authorities have warned the public that
“participating in an unauthorized assembly” on Saturday risks a maximum penalty
of five years’ imprisonment. They have also closed large parts of Victoria
Park, once the site of packed annual candlelight vigils attended by tens of
thousands.
‘Infringing individual freedom’
The park and nearby Causeway
Bay shopping district were heavily policed Saturday, and multiple people were
stopped and searched. One man, wearing a black
T-shirt and carrying a white
chrysanthemum, a sign of mourning, spoke to reporters after being searched.
“The police warned me not to do anything to attract
people to gather,” said the man, surnamed Lau. “But people are going to work,
and I am just passing by with a white
chrysanthemum.” “This is infringing on
Hong Kong people’s individual freedom.” Lau said he used to join the vigil
every year.
One former leader of the now-disbanded vigil
organizer, Hong Kong Alliance, was surrounded by police as he walked around
with a bunch of red and white roses, and had his bag searched.
Pedestrian areas where in the past pro-democracy
groups would set up booths were cordoned off, and local media said some
reporters had their information taken down and were restricted into a press
area. “Keep going. Nothing to see here,”
an officer told passersby through a loudspeaker.
AFP journalists saw one man in a black T-shirt being
taken away in a police van.
The night before in the same area, a performance
artist who whittled a potato into the shape of a candle and held a lighter to
it was also taken away.
‘Scared of assembly’
Security was heightened in
Beijing on Saturday as well, with officer
numbers bulked up, and ID checks and facial recognition devices set up on roads
leading to
Tiananmen Square. China has gone to exhaustive lengths to erase the
crackdown from collective memory, omitting it from history textbooks and
scrubbing references to it from the Chinese internet and social media
platforms.
A similar approach is now beginning to be applied to
Hong Kong as authorities remold the city in the mainland’s image. Since last
September, the Victoria Park vigil’s organizers have been arrested and charged
with subversion, their June 4 museum has been closed, statues have been
removed, and memorial church services canceled.
Commemoration events in Macau were also canceled
this year.
“The government is so scared of any possible
assembly,” said Dorothy, a 32-year-old coach who spoke to AFP near Victoria
Park on Saturday morning. She said she had not been a regular attendee at the
vigils, but that it was “a great loss for the society”.
‘Memories systematically erased’
Multiple Western Consulate
Generals in Hong Kong on Saturday posted Tiananmen tributes on social media,
despite local media reports that they had been warned by the city’s Chinese
foreign ministry office to refrain from doing so. The
EU’s office confirmed to
AFP that they had received a call.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday
released a statement pledging to continue to “honor and remember those who
stood up for human rights and fundamental freedoms”.”While many are no longer
able to speak up themselves, we and many around the world continue to stand up
on their behalf,” he said, specifically mentioning the situation in Hong Kong.
Vigils will be held globally, with rights group
Amnesty International coordinating candlelit ones in 20 cities “to demand
justice and show solidarity for Hong Kong”.
One Hong Konger told AFP that in place of the
Victoria Park vigil, she had lit a candle at home instead, and would walk
around the city wearing a T-shirt with June 4 numerals as a more “subtle” form
of remembrance.
“The collective memories of June 4 in Hong Kong are being
systematically erased,” said Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in a statement on
Saturday. “But we believe that such coarse and unreasonable measures cannot
wipe away people’s memories.”
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