Turnout for the vigil was down, though some protesters defied orders.
In the face of a new national security law and the arrests of political activists, people in Hong Kong still took to the streets on June 4 to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of the massacre at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. Victoria Park, in northern Hong Kong, usually draws thousands of people waving candles to memorialize the still-unknown number of people who died during the Chinese government’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. But this year, Hongkongers who dared to show up in person were met with signs from police warning of their possible prosecution, and Victoria Park was barricaded shut. Officially,2021’s Tiananmen Square remembrance was canceled by the local government because of the coronavirus pandemic, as it was last year. But activists told the BBC that they see this year’s intervention as a step to silence dissent on the island, one of the few places in China where the 1989 Tiananmen Square activists have been allowed to be commemorated. Last year, when police closed Victoria Park to the Tiananmen Square commemoration, demonstrators knocked down the barricades and continued their candlelight vigil. It was the first time the Hong Kong government had tried to stop the demonstration in 30 years. But since then, the Chinese government passed a new security law, which makes it easier to punish protesters and gives the mainland more control over Hong Kong. A new law, to which Hong Kong officials weren’t privy The morning of June 4, the vice chair for the pro-democracy group Hong Kong Alliance, Chow Hang Tung, was arrested for posting about the remembrance online. Among other posts promoting the memory of Tiananmen Square, Chow called for people to “turn on lights everywhere, mobile phone lights, candles, electronic candles…” on her Facebook page the day before her arrest. Chow, who is also a lawyer, predicted that she would be arrested in an interview before June 4. She was arrested for promoting an unauthorized assembly and was released from custody on Saturday. When the Chinese government passed the national security law for Hong Kong in June of 2020, the full text of the legislation was kept secret — even from Chief Executive Carrie Lam, the top public official in Hong Kong. The law’s 66 articles criminalize acts that fall into four categories: secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion. Critics of the bill, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have called the text a threat to free speech and overly broad. As Vox’s Jen Kirby wrote in 2020 after the passage of the law: Activists in Hong Kong have asked foreign governments to intervene in disputes with China, including during the recent extradition bill protests, where it was not uncommon to see American and British flags among protesters.
