Last modified on Fri 4 Jun 2021 09.36 EDT
A man walked down a Hong Kong street on Friday wearing a shirt hand-painted with “There is nothing to say”. The previous night an artist held a placard aloft reading: “Don’t go to Victoria Park and light candles”.
On any other day these sights would have been confusing, but on Friday they were a small symbol of resistance to authorities’ efforts to stop anyone from commemorating the 4 June 1989 massacre of student protesters in Beijing.
streets of HK rn: “there is nothing 2 say” pic.twitter.com/dbxjQSWwIG csz (@cszabla) June 4, 2021
Hong Kong has long been the traditional home of public remembrance of the Tiananmen Square massacre, with an annual vigil in Victoria Park, attended by tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people.
HONG KONG, June 4 (Reuters) - Hong Kong sealed off a park where tens of thousands gather annually to commemorate China's 1989 Tiananmen crackdown and arrested the vigil's organiser on Friday, in what activists see as suppression of one of the city's main symbols of democratic hope.
The ban on the vigil came amid growing concern about the suppression of the semi-autonomous city’s freedoms, notably a national security law imposed by Beijing…
Thousands of officers are expected to patrol the city's streets on Friday to prevent gatherings of people lighting candles for the pro-democracy protesters killed by Chinese troops in Beijing 32 years ago.