Hong Kong Cracks Down on Tiananmen Memorials
Hong Kong authorities barred public commemorations of the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre for the third straight year.
Hong Kong’s Victoria Park, the site of a traditional memorial to mark the Tiananmen crackdown, saw a large police presence on Saturday, the Associated Press and Reuters reported. The city government said on Friday that parts of the park would be closed on June 4, when Tiananmen square is usually commemorated, to prevent “illegal activities.”
While the Catholic Church in Hong Kong has previously marked the anniversary in special masses, this year the diocese canceled those services for the first time in three decades.
Police arrested 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former Bishop of Hong Kong who has criticized the Chinese Communist Party, in May of this year, subsequently releasing him on bail.
The Financial Times reported that at least one mass took place on Saturday to memorialize people “who died for justice.”
“Public memorials may be gone this year, but what I remember in my heart, you cannot make it disappear,” one of the congregants told the FT.
Large memorials were first banned in June 2020, with police saying the ban was instituted to minimize the risk of Covid. There were just five new cases of Covid recorded in Hong Kong in the week prior to June 4, the FT noted at the time.
The developments come after China applied a sweeping national security law to Hong Kong in June 2020, outlawing subversion of the government. The law was passed after massive pro-democracy protests rocked Hong Kong for much of 2019.
Hong Kong was a British colony prior to its return to China in 1997. The territory retained a level of autonomy that protected residents’ freedom of speech and assembly, however in May 2020 former secretary of state Mike Pompeo notified Congress that Hong Kong could no longer be considered autonomous.
