Hong Kong media reported on Wednesday the Leisure and Cultural Service Department (LCSD) has suspended any bookings at Victoria Park for June 4, effectively shutting down the famous vigil for the Tiananmen Square massacre for the third year running. 2022 marks the 33rd anniversary of the savage Communist slaughter of dissident students.
LCSD officials and Hong Kong police claimed the soccer pitches in Victoria Park are closed for maintenance, and no one has filed applications to hold large gatherings in the park, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported. Officials confirmed all bookings for June 4, the traditional day of observance for Tiananmen victims, have been suspended.
Hong Kong’s candlelight vigil, the largest Tiananmen observance in any territory controlled by Communist China, was canceled for the first time in its history in June 2020. Hong Kong’s Beijing-controlled government said the vigil would be a “major threat to public health” during the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.
Thousands of Hong Kong residents nevertheless took to the streets for “illegal” memorial ceremonies on June 4, 2020. Huge crowds appeared for the Victoria Park candlelight vigil even though it was officially canceled.
People gesture the popular protest slogan ‘Five demands, not one less’ as they attend a vigil in Victoria Park in Hong Kong on June 4, 2020, after the annual remembrance that traditionally takes place in the park to mark the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. (YAN ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images)
Amnesty International (AI) called the arrest of 12 people who participated in the peaceful but “unauthorized” 2020 vigil a sign of the “accelerating collapse of human rights in Hong Kong.”
“Despite the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities’ relentless attempts to erase history by jailing people who peacefully light a candle for the victims of the Tiananmen crackdown, the continued support for the June Fourth movement in Hong Kong and around the world shows that this atrocity will never be forgotten,” AI said.
Police patrol as members of the press film at Victoria Park, after closing a venue where Hong Kong people traditionally gather annually to mourn the victims of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, in the Causeway Bay district on June 4, 2021 in Hong Kong. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
The vigil was canceled again in 2021, and once again many Hong Kongers defied the ban, including a small group of women whose children were killed by the Chinese Communist government in 1989. A swarm of Communist agents shadowed the women on their march to the local cemetery.
Pro-democracy activists attend a march in Hong Kong on May 26, 2019, to commemorate the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing. (PHILIP FONG/AFP/Getty Images)
Hong Kong officials invoked the tyrannical “national security law” imposed by Beijing to crack down on the group that organized the annual Tiananmen vigil, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. The alliance disbanded in September 2021 after being accused of “acting as the agent of a foreign power.”
The persecution of the Hong Kong Alliance continued this month with a clumsily-rigged trial for five of its leaders, at which prosecutors were given carte blanche to describe them as “foreign agents” without a shred of evidence or even a requirement to identify the foreign power they supposedly worked for.
Groups that still wish to organize Tiananmen vigils this year, including the above-mentioned Tiananmen Mothers and the League of Social Democrats pro-democracy party, told RFA they suspected all permits for large-scale gatherings would be denied once more as the Chinese Communist Party tries to put the vigil down for good.
“Of course, the government keeps hoping that people will forget about June 4, but I don’t think they will,” former League of Social Democrats chair Avery Ng said.
“The candlelight won’t be extinguished; it will just be lit by people of conscience all over the world,” said Tiananmen Mothers spokeswoman You Weijie.
The Taiwan-based New School for Democracy said it would co-host a vigil in Taiwan to honor the suppressed Victoria Park event. The Taiwanese event will include a replica of the Pillar of Shame, a fabled 26-foot-tall sculpture of the Tiananmen dead that was displayed in Victoria Park, and later at the University of Hong Kong, until it was ruthlessly torn down by the Chinese Communist Party in December 2021.
Chairman Tzeng Chien-yuan told RFA he “used to envy Hong Kong’s freedoms and rule of law,” as exemplified by the massive Tiananmen vigil, since he grew up during a time when Taiwan was under authoritarian rule.
“Taiwan’s path to democracy was nourished and supported by Hong Kong, and I think we Taiwanese are duty bound to speak up for Hongkongers and for all Chinese people now that the June 4 event can’t be held there any more,” Tseng said.
On Wednesday, the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong canceled its Tiananmen Square memorial service for the first time ever, following the arrest of 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen.
“According to the Catholic faith, we can commemorate the deceased in different ways, holding a mass is of course one way, but just praying for the deceased in private or in small groups will also be very meaningful,” the diocese said.
Church insiders told the South China Morning Post (SCMP) the arrest of Cardinal Zen sent “shock waves” through Hong Kong’s Catholic community. Diocese leaders said they were concerned that holding the Tiananmen service “might violate the national security law now in force.”