Hong Kong cops swoop as rest of world remembers Tiananmen

Authorities detained several people as they pounced on any attempt at public commemoration of the 33rd anniversary of the crackdown

Yu Wai-pan from the League of Social Democrats is detained in the Causeway Bay district of Hong Kong on Saturday. Picture: AFP

Hong Kong authorities on Saturday detained several people as they pounced on any attempt at public commemoration of the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, while around the world tributes were paid to the victims of the bloody event.

As night fell, candles appeared in the windows of several foreign countries’ missions to Hong Kong – in defiance of a warning not to do so – and on various street corners around the city.

Discussion of the events of 1989, when China set troops and tanks on peaceful protesters, 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 widespread pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Authorities had warned the public that “participating in an unauthorised assembly” on Saturday risked a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment.

They also closed large parts of Victoria Park, once the site of packed annual candlelight vigils attended by tens of thousands on the anniversary.

The park and nearby Causeway Bay shopping district – one of the city’s busiest neighbourhoods – were heavily policed all day Saturday. People were stopped and searched for carrying flowers, wearing black and, in one case, carrying a toy tank box.

Five men and one woman, aged 19 to 80, were arrested during the course of the day, Hong Kong police said. Three were detained for obstructing officers in the execution of their duties, one for inciting others to join an unauthorised assembly, and the remaining person was apprehended for possession of offensive weapons, according to the police.

Yu Wai-pan, from the League of Social Democrats, was also briefly detained but later released without charge, according to his party. “For 33 years it has always been peaceful, but today it’s like (police) are facing a big enemy,” said LSD head Chan Po-ying.

Security was heightened in Beijing on Saturday, 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 remould the city in the mainland’s image.

Since September, the Victoria Park vigil’s organisers have been arrested and charged with subversion, their June 4 museum has been closed, statues have been removed and memorial church services cancelled. Commemoration events in Macau were also cancelled this year.

On Saturday, multiple Western consulates-general in Hong Kong posted Tiananmen tributes on social media, despite being warned by the city’s Chinese Foreign Ministry office to refrain from doing so. At dusk, both the US consulate-general and the EU office’s windows were illuminated by the flickering light of candles.

“The European Union always stands in solidarity with human rights defenders across the globe,” the latter tweeted.

Vigils were held globally, with Amnesty International co-ordinating candlelit events in 20 cities “to demand justice and show solidarity for Hong Kong”.

AFP