In Taiwan and elsewhere, people met on Saturday to remember those killed in China in 1989 — and the freedoms lost in Hong Kong, where such vigils are now unthinkable.
For decades, a large candlelight vigil was held in Hong Kong each June 4, to commemorate those killed when Chinese soldiers crushed the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing. On Saturday, smaller crowds gathered in Taipei and other cities around the world — this time mourning not just the people slain 33 years ago, but also the fate of Hong Kong, where the smothering of dissent has put an end to the vigil in Victoria Park, the world’s most prominent public memorial to the victims of 1989.
“Now it’s about the two things together — Hong Kong as well as what happened on June 4,” said Francis Tse, a former Hong Kong resident who was one of about 400 people commemorating the anniversary in downtown Sydney, Australia. He and many others carried signs calling for the release of activists imprisoned in Hong Kong.
“We don’t have the chance to go to Victoria Park anymore,” Mr. Tse said, “but now there are many Victoria Parks like this across the world.”
Since 2020, when Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong, the local government has essentially banned public commemorations of the 1989 killings, which wiped out a student-led protest movement calling for democratic change in China. Taipei — the capital of Taiwan, which has resisted China’s claims of sovereignty for decades — has since emerged as the new center for remembrance of the massacre. On Saturday, those who joined the commemorations in Taipei, Sydney and elsewhere — another was scheduled for London — said they had also come to denounce the erasure of political freedoms in Hong Kong, as well as China’s draconian policies in two other regions, Xinjiang and Tibet.
“Now Hong Kong can no longer tell the truth and the real history, we must pass on this history even more in Taiwan,” said Henry Tong, a 41-year-old from Hong Kong who moved to Taiwan last year and attended this year’s vigil in Taipei. “Because of Hong Kong’s prohibition and suppression, it has blossomed everywhere.”
By dusk in Taipei, hundreds of people had gathered in the city center, placing electric candles on a banner showing the date of June 4, 1989.
