Tens of thousands joined a somber candlelight vigil in Hong Kong on Tuesday to mark the 30th anniversary of Chinese troops opening fire on student-led democracy protesters in and around Tiananmen Square, as authorities in Beijing went into lockdown.
HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) – Tens of thousands joined a somber candlelight vigil in Hong Kong on Tuesday to mark the 30th anniversary of Chinese troops opening fire on student-led democracy protesters in and around Tiananmen Square, as authorities in Beijing went into lockdown.
Demonstrators gathered in the financial hub’s Victoria Park, holding up candles and placards as others rallied next to a replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue, which was erected in Tiananmen Square during the 1989 demonstrations in Beijing.
Nearby, a life-size replica of Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese Nobel Peace Prize-winning political dissident who died in 2017 while in custody, floated in a waterway adorned with flowers.
As tens of thousands thronged Hong Kong for the annual vigil, censors at Chinese internet companies said tools to detect and block content related to the 1989 crackdown had reached unprecedented levels of accuracy.
In the former British colony of Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems formula” that guarantees rights and freedoms not seen on the mainland, organizers said 180,000 joined the peaceful vigil, filling six football fields.
Police authorities put the turnout at 37,000.
In comparison, authorities in mainland China, where the anniversary remains taboo, deployed a security blanket in and around Tiananmen Square. China has never provided a death toll for the 1989 violence. Rights groups and witnesses say it could run into the thousands.
“It is very important that Hong Kong people continue to remember the June 4 tragedy, and indeed, preserve the memory,” said Richard Tsoi, vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.
“And don’t let the Chinese authority try to erase the memory for the whole nation.”
Others chanted: “End one-party dictatorship” and “build a democratic China.
