This year marks the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Effectively under communist rule, the traditional candlelight vigil on June 4 in Victoria Park has been banned one way or another for the third year. Yet despite warnings from the police and their heavy presence, the people of Hong Kong are still marking the occasion in their own ways.
Since 1990, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (HKASPDMC, referred to as “The Alliance” hereafter) had hosted the Victoria Park candlelight vigil, the world’s largest June 4 memorial, at the soccer fields in Victoria Park, Causeway Bay.
On this day every year, hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers and tourists gathered in Victoria Park, to light candles and chant slogans, in memory of victims of the 1989 Communist Party’s bloody crackdown on students and citizens demanding political reform and democracy in Tiananmen Square.
