Hong Kong police detain over a dozen on Tiananmen anniversary

HONG KONG: Hong Kong police detained more than a dozen people, including prominent pro-democracy figures, AFP reporters witnessed on Sunday (Jun 4), the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Chan Po-ying, a veteran activist and head of the League of Social Democrats, was briefly detained in a busy Hong Kong shopping district - an area that for years was the site of commemorations of the bloody Jun 4, 1989 crackdown in China.

Holding a small LED candle - a common sight during the annual vigil - and two flowers, Chan was immediately seized by police and hauled into a van.

According to her party, she was released about two hours later.

Other recognisable pro-democracy figures detained by police were Alexandra Wong, an activist nicknamed "Grandma Wong", former chairwoman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association Mak Yin-ting, and Leo Tang, a former leader of the now-disbanded Confederation of Trade Unions.

In total, AFP reporters saw more than a dozen people detained as of Sunday night.

One of them was a woman who shouted, "Raise candles! Mourn 64!" - shorthand for the sensitive date.

Another was a young man dressed in black who carried a book titled "35th of May", another way to express the four days after May 31 in mainland China.

A woman reporter with a Hong Kong outlet was heard saying "I didn't do anything" as officers detained her.

And Tsui Hon-kwong, who was a former member of Hong Kong Alliance - the group that had organised the annual Tiananmen vigil - was also removed while holding a LED candle.

"LET THE WORLD KNOW"

Discussion of the Tiananmen crackdown is highly sensitive for China's communist leadership and commemoration is forbidden on the mainland.

The government sent troops and tanks to Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 to break up peaceful protests, crushing a weeks-long wave of demonstrations calling for political change.

Hundreds - by some estimates, more than 1,000 - were killed.

For decades, Hong Kong was the only Chinese city with a large-scale commemoration - a key index of the liberties and political pluralism afforded by its semi-autonomous status.

But after the vigil was banned since 2020, the park was barricaded with metal barriers.

This year, Victoria Park was transformed into a "hometown carnival fair" organised by pro-Beijing groups.

"The pro-Beijing camp want to ... occupy the venue to exclude the mourners," said Chiu, a 68-year-old retiree, who sat on a park bench with an unlit candle by him in quiet defiance - a short distance from the fair.

ERASE MEMORIES

Beijing has gone to exhaustive lengths to erase the 1989 event from public memory in the mainland.

All mention of the crackdown is scrubbed from China's internet. 

Over the weekend, sites of more recent protests - a bridge in Beijing where a "freedom" banner was unfurled, and Wulumuqi Street in Shanghai where demonstrations happened in November - also saw heightened security.

Hong Kong authorities were vigilant in the weeks before Jun 4, with police seizing a commemorative "Pillar of Shame" statue for a security trial and removing books on the Tiananmen crackdown from public libraries.

But there were still pockets of defiance Sunday around Hong Kong - a shop gave away candles, while a bookstore displayed Tiananmen Square archival material.

FREEDOM TO MOURN

Sidestepping questions about whether public mourning was allowed, Hong Kong's leader John Lee had maintained that the public must act according to the law or "be ready to face the consequences".

Vigils planned around the world, from Japan to Sydney, saw people stand solemnly with a candle next to images of the 1989 crackdown.

In Taiwan, nearly 500 people gathered at Taipei's Liberty Square to chant "fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong" as night fell.

They lit candles in the shape of "8964" - numerals forbidden in mainland China because it references the events of June 4, 1989.

"We need to cherish the freedom and democracy we have in Taiwan," Perry Wu, 31, told AFP. "I feel really sad to see the news of people getting arrested today in Hong Kong."

Hong Kong activist Wong Yat-chin, currently in prison for a national security charge, said he mourned the "loss of the freedom to mourn".

"It's not a crime to remember a day," he said on his Instagram page Sunday.