Police were deployed in large numbers across Hong Kong on Saturday to prevent any public gatherings for the 33e anniversary of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, forcing those who wished to commemorate this bloody event to do so in secret or in a more subtle way.
On June 4, 1989, the communist regime sent tanks and troops to quell peaceful protesters who had for weeks occupied Beijing’s iconic central square demanding political change and an end to systemic corruption.
The crushing of the movement had caused hundreds of deaths, 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 and online discussions on this subject are systematically censored.
In Beijing, authorities have installed facial recognition devices in the streets leading to the square. The police carried out 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, the local authorities have been working to erase all traces of the memory of Tiananmen.
Black t-shirt and chrysanthemum
Participating in an “unauthorized assembly” is punishable by up to five years in prison. This particularly concerns Victoria Park, where a candlelight vigil once brought together tens of thousands of people on June 4.
Much of the park was closed on Friday evening, and the police were massively deployed around Saturday. An AFP reporter saw a man in a black T-shirt taken into a police van. “Move on, there’s nothing to see here,” shouted loudspeakers.
A former leader of the Hong Kong Alliance, the association which organized the vigils, was surrounded by the agents as he strolled through the neighborhood with a bouquet of red and white roses in his hand, and his bag was searched.
A man dressed in black and carrying a chrysanthemum told AFP that he was also checked and searched. “The police ordered me not to do anything that incites people to gather,” he said. “But people go to work and I just walk by with a white chrysanthemum,” he added.
In the commercial district of Causeway Bay, which borders Victoria Park, a street artist who had carved a potato in the shape of a candle and was holding a lighter was arrested on Friday by a dozen officers.
“The government is very afraid of a possible gathering,” Dorothy, a 32-year-old Hong Kong woman, told AFP in the vicinity of the park. 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
The lack of clarity on what is legal or not has prompted six Hong Kong universities in recent months to unbolt, as a precaution, Tiananmen memorials erected on their campuses.
Several Western consulates in Hong Kong posted Tiananmen-related messages on social media. The European Union office confirmed local media reports to AFP that the Chinese authorities demanded that they refrain from doing so.
On Twitter, which is blocked in China, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid tribute to the “brave protesters” who had “peacefully demanded democracy in Tiananmen Square”: “despite the removal of memorials and attempts to erasing history, we honor their memory by promoting respect for human rights wherever they are threatened”.
In response, a spokesperson for the city’s Chinese Foreign Ministry office said it “strongly rejects and strongly condemns” 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.
Vigils will nonetheless be held around the world, with rights group Amnesty International coordinating candlelight protests in 20 cities to “demand justice and stand in solidarity with Hong Kong”.
At a commemoration event 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 “it’s is the only place now where we can come to remember. I am also here on behalf of all my friends from Hong Kong who cannot be present”.
“The collective memory of June 4 in Hong Kong is being systematically erased,” Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said. “Such crude and unreasonable measures cannot erase the memory of the people.”