The police multiplied the arrests Saturday in Hong Kong, to prevent any commemoration in public of the bloody repression of Tiananmen. This while rallies in tribute to the victims were held in several democratic countries.
AFP reporters saw at least half a dozen people being taken away by police, including activist Yu Wai-pan of the League of Social Democrats (LSD), a pro-democracy political party in the crosshairs authorities.
They had warned that any participation in ‘unauthorized assemblies’ would be punishable by five years in prison. In particular around Victoria Park, closed on Saturday, which was the scene until 2019 of gigantic candlelight vigils in memory of Tiananmen.
In the evening, many passers-by around the park turned on the lamp of their mobile phones, failing to light candles. The police summoned them by loudspeaker to turn them off, warning them that they were breaking the law.
draconian law
On June 4, 1989, the Chinese communist regime repressed with tanks and troops the peaceful demonstrators who, for weeks, had occupied the emblematic square of Beijing to demand political change and an end to systemic corruption. The crushing of the movement had killed hundreds, more than a thousand according to some estimates.
Since then, the Chinese authorities have been trying to erase Tiananmen from the collective memory. History textbooks do not mention it, online discussions are systematically censored.
In Beijing, authorities have installed facial recognition devices in the streets leading to the square. The police carried out fussy identity checks on Saturday. If in China evoking the events of 1989 has always been taboo, Hong Kong was an exception until 2020.
Beijing then imposed a draconian national security law on the semi-autonomous region to stifle any dissent, after the gigantic pro-democracy demonstrations of 2019. Since then, local authorities have also been working to erase all traces of the memory of Tiananmen.
Black t-shirt and chrysanthemum
On Saturday evening, Mr. Yu and two other LSD members arrived at the busy Causeway Bay shopping district and stood in silence, wearing masks featuring crosses over their mouths. They were searched by the police, then released, and Mr. Yu was arrested again a few minutes later as he approached Victoria Park.
A former leader of the Hong Kong Alliance, the association that organized the vigils, was surrounded by his agents as he strolled through the neighborhood with a bouquet of red and white roses in his hand, and his bag was searched.
“The government is very afraid of a possible rally,” Dorothy, a 32-year-old Hong Kong woman, told AFP. The end of the vigils is “a great loss for society”, she regrets. A Hong Kong woman told AFP that she lit a candle at home and placed a replica of the ‘Goddess of Democracy’, the statue symbol of the Tiananmen Movement, on a window sill.
Warnings to consulates
Vigils had already been banned in 2020 and 2021 in the name of the fight against Covid, then last September the Hong Kong Alliance was dissolved, its June 4 Museum dismantled, its leaders arrested. The lack of clarity on what is legal or not has also prompted six Hong Kong universities in recent months to unbolt Tiananmen memorials erected on their campuses.
On Saturday evening, the windows of the United States consulate and the office of the European Union (EU) were on the contrary lit by candles. The EU ‘always stands in solidarity with human rights defenders around the world’, the latter wrote on Twitter (which is blocked in China), posting a photo of dozens of candles on a windowsill.
Earlier, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid tribute on Twitter to the ‘brave protesters’ who had ‘peacefully demanded democracy’ in Tiananmen: ‘despite the removal of memorials and attempts to erase history, we let us honor their memory by promoting respect for human rights wherever they are threatened’.
In response, a spokesman for the city’s Chinese Foreign Ministry office said it “strongly rejects” the statements. ‘Their political show has interfered in China’s internal affairs under the guise of human rights and freedom, and smeared Hong Kong’s human rights and rule of law, to incite the ‘hostility and confrontation and tarnish China’s image’, according to a statement.
‘Memory of the People’
Vigils were nevertheless organized on Saturday by Amnesty International in 20 cities around the world. In Melbourne, “we want this spirit to live on forever,” said Frank Ruan, a former Tiananmen Square protester who said he was lucky to have survived.
In Taipei, Connie Lui, a 65-year-old hospital worker who left Hong Kong a year and a half ago due to the political situation, told AFP that ‘this is the only place now where we can come and remember. I am also here on behalf of all my friends from Hong Kong who cannot be here.’
“The collective memory of June 4 in Hong Kong is being systematically erased,” said Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, “such crude and unreasonable measures cannot erase the memory of the people.”
/ATS