Tiananmen Vigil in Hong Kong Draws Smallest Crowd in Nine Years
Tiananmen Vigil in Hong Kong Draws Smallest Crowd in Nine Years
(Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong’s annual candlelight vigil to commemorate China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown attracted the smallest crowd in nine years as local student leaders shunned the gathering.
Organizers put attendance at Sunday’s event -- in honor of hundreds killed when Chinese troops crushed pro-democracy protests in Beijing -- at about 110,000, the fewest since 2008. In the run-up to the vigil, only about 1,000 people joined an annual march on May 28 to protest the crackdown, the fewest in nine years and the second-smallest number since the marches started.
Demonstrators attend a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong June 4.
“There are some voices from Hong Kong citizens that the vigil has no impact now,” said Samson Liu, a 50-year-old Hong Kong citizen who had participated in a pro-democracy parade in Beijing 28 years ago. “They don’t represent me. There is something we should stick to it, otherwise we will regret someday."
Cracks in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movements emerged as the 79-day so-called Occupy protests in 2014 ended without concessions from Beijing to allow free elections of the city’s chief executive. That also fueled a so-called localist movement, which seeks to divorce demands for more freedom for Hong Kong from efforts to reform China. Student unions of all 10 universities in Hong Kong boycotted the vigil this year, citing disagreement with the organizer’s mandate to bring democracy to China.
“We should focus on fighting for democracy in Hong Kong under the Chinese rule,” Lala Lai, 24, student union president of the Education University of Hong Kong, said before the vigil. “As a local-born who didn’t witness Tiananmen Square, I wonder why we have to change China.”
Still, pro-democracy protesters filled an area equivalent to six soccer fields at Hong Kong’s Victoria Park with thousands of candles. They stood in silence for a minute to commemorate those killed in the crackdown. They chanted slogans such as “justice to June 4th; end the one-party rule.”
They surrounded the Goddess of Democracy Statue in the center of the park next to a pedestal engraved with the phrase.
The decline in attendance at the vigil came less than a month before Hong Kong sees the 20th anniversary of its return to the Chinese rule. Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit the city to oversee the celebrations and the inauguration of the new government. Hong Kong was under British rule until July 1997.
“The young nowadays feel that they are Hongkongers, and anything Chinese has nothing to do with us,” said Claudia Mo, a Hong Kong lawmaker, as she held a candle at the vigil. “It’s a rift between the two identities.”
Beijing Quiet
It remained quiet in Beijing during the weekend, although security was beefed up on subways and streets. Bluegogo, a domestic bike-sharing app, on Saturday switched the bike icons on its map to blue ribbons. Social media posts also showed the app’s maps with tank icons instead of bikes moving down the Avenue of Eternal Peace in the Chinese capital toward Tiananmen Square. Bluegogo did not respond to phone and email requests for comment.
In Taipei, a students’ group for promoting China’s democratization, Taiwan Association for Human Rights, along with several other organizations held a vigil in the rain.
"The persistence is the only thing we have, this is our weapon, should we use it well, that leads to a success," Wang Dan, one of the student leaders of the Beijing protests who works as an academic and democracy activist in exile, said in a speech at the Taipei event.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen urged Beijing to treat the Tiananmen Square incident with an open heart, according to her Twitter account.
"We are still holding on to our shared hope: that in our lifetime, June 4th will be officially recognized for what it was," said the Tiananmen Mothers, a group that represents the parents of the victims of the 1989 crackdown. "The reputation of the innocent victims killed will be rehabilitated, and justice and peace will be restored in this great land of China, so that we can bring solace to our deceased loved ones!"
--With assistance from David Ramli and Ken Wills
To contact the reporters on this story: Fion Li in Hong Kong at fli59@bloomberg.net, Daniela Wei in Hong Kong at jwei74@bloomberg.net, Miaojung Lin in Taipei at mlin179@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Fion Li at fli59@bloomberg.net, John McCluskey, Mark Niquette