For the first time since the Beijing Tiananmen Square massacre 32 years ago, there has been no vigil in Hong Kong to commemorate the victims.
Victoria Park, where the event traditionally took place, was cordoned off by police on Friday.
The authorities justified the ban on the vigil with the corona pandemic despite the low number of infections.
Friederike Böge
Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.
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Nevertheless, hundreds of Hong Kong residents gathered around the park in the evening and held up their illuminated cell phone displays as a token of remembrance.
In other parts of the metropolis, too, people paused for a minute's silence at 8 p.m. and lit candles.
Thousands of police officers patrolled the entire city.
Activist Chow Hang-tung was arrested
One of the organizers of the annual vigil had already been arrested that morning. Police accused Chow Hang-tung of promoting the unauthorized gathering on social media. The lawyer said a few days ago that she was planning to light a candle for the victims as a private person in Victoria Park on the anniversary of the massacre. "As long as they don't say candles are illegal, we will light candles," she said. It is about defending a minimum of morality. Chow's Facebook page announced on Friday that she would instead fast in police custody.
At least one other person, a 20-year-old delivery driver, was arrested.
Activists suggested that Chow's arrest was intended as a deterrent to deter others from commemorating.
Nevertheless, in the afternoon students from the University of Hong Kong laid flowers on the sculpture "Pillar of Shame", which was first erected in Victoria Park in memory of the Tiananmen massacre and later moved to the university grounds.
There were no major clashes with the police until evening.
The police disbanded the crowd with reference to the Corona rule.
She later announced that individual demonstrators had shouted slogans that violated national security law.
In mainland China, even indirect gestures of remembrance have been censored online.
For example, two candle images have been removed from the list of emojis on the Weibo social network.
The editor-in-chief of the English-language party newspaper Global Times, Hu Xijin, uttered mockery and ridicule at the efforts of many Hong Kongers to keep alive the memory of the bloody suppression of the Beijing democracy movement.
"We laugh at those who pose at 'memorial events' orchestrated by outside forces," he wrote on Twitter.
The Chinese edition of the newspaper made no mention of the anniversary of the massacre.
Reports about Hong Kong on the American broadcaster CNN, which in any case can only be received in a few places in China, were censored with a pause picture.