HONG KONG—Tens of thousands of Hongkongers joined a candlelight vigil Thursday to mark the suppression of the 1989 student-led Tiananmen Square protests, an annual commemoration with new meaning for the city’s young after a year fighting Beijing.
For the first time in the vigil’s quarter-century history, some student groups didn’t take part and instead held their own memorials, a sign of an emerging rift between young and old over Hong Kong identity that took root during last year’s pro-democracy protests, known as Occupy Central.
The vigil is the only large-scale public commemoration of the victims on Chinese soil, and the Tiananmen events remain a taboo topic on the mainland. Hundreds and possibly thousands of unarmed protesters and onlookers were killed when tanks and soldiers entered central Beijing on June 3–4, 1989, to put down the student-led protests.
