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No flowers: Alexandra Wong arrested by police officers near Victoria Park in Hong Kong

Photo: Anthony Kwan / Getty Images

On the anniversary of the crackdown on the mass protests on Tiananmen Square in China, there have been several arrests in Hong Kong, including those of Alexandra Wong, who became known as "Grandmother Wong", and prominent opposition figure Chan Po-ying. Reporters from the AFP news agency counted more than a dozen arrests in the Causeway Bay district by Sunday afternoon. For a long time, Hong Kong was the only city in China apart from the self-governing island of Taiwan where vigils could still take place – until they were banned there three years ago.

In Causeway Bay, numerous police officers were on duty, stopping, searching and questioning people. The 67-year-old Wong had been walking through the neighborhood with flowers before she was taken to a van by police officers without resisting.

Chan, the leader of the Social Democratic League, one of the last remaining opposition parties, was holding a small LED candle and two flowers as she was taken away by police. Journalist and former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists' Association, Mak Yin-ting, was also among those arrested. A man sitting on a bench with a candle in his hand was also led to a police car. "I was arrested because I was just sitting there," the man said.

Vigils also banned in Hong Kong since 2020

On the eve of the anniversary, four people were arrested in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The arrests were made for "improper behavior in a public place" and "seditious acts," police said on Saturday. Four other people were arrested in order to intensify the investigation.

In Victoria Park, a market organized by groups loyal to Beijing took place this weekend. A 53-year-old visitor praised the atmosphere of the market and said when asked about the vigils: "Hong Kong is a different place today."

Sunday marks the 34th anniversary of the crackdown on the Tiananmen protests, with commemorative events banned across China. For years, Hong Kong was the only city where the events in Tiananmen Square were still commemorated in large public vigils.

On the night of June 4, 1989, the Chinese army used tanks against students demonstrating for more democracy on Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Hundreds, according to some estimates even more than a thousand people, were killed at that time. China is trying to erase the event from the national memory – any mention of the brutal crackdown is being removed from Chinese websites.

Until 2020, tens of thousands of people gathered with candles in Victoria Park every year on June 4. However, after massive pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Beijing enacted the so-called Security Law for the Special Administrative Region in 2020. It provides the authorities with draconian means of suppressing protests and has resulted in a ban on annual vigils and the arrest of organizers.

Vigils from Japan to New York

Hong Kong's Chief Executive John Lee called on the public to abide by the law or be "ready for the consequences". Most prominent democracy activists in the Special Administrative Region, which was returned to China by Britain in 1997, have fled abroad or been arrested since 2020.

The chairman of the Taiwan-based NGO Hong Kong Outlanders, Sky Fung, said: "History and commemoration cannot be erased so easily."

Vigils were planned around the world, from Japan to London, where a re-enactment of the 1989 protests in Beijing was to take place in Trafalgar Square on Sunday. In New York, participants in the protests in Beijing opened a museum on Friday to commemorate the "democratic dreams of the Chinese people".

In the face of "the threat posed to human civilization by the Xi Jinping regime (...) we should remember the year 1989," said Wang Dan, the museum's founder and one of the leaders of the Tiananmen protests. China's current head of state, Xi, cemented his power last year with a historic third term.

ahh/AFP