04 June, 16:29

Hong Kong: no vigil for Tiananmen, private commemorations

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Tiananmen vigil banned © ANSA

(ANSA) - HONG KONG, JUN 04 - No public commemorations in Hong Kong for the 33rd anniversary of the bloody repression in Tiananmen Square.

Citizens of the former British colony were forced to do it privately and without much fanfare, after the police warning that no public gatherings would be tolerated.

With sentences of up to 5 years of imprisonment.

This notice applied in particular to Victoria Park, the symbolic place of the vigil that had brought together thousands of people in previous years.

Much of this park was closed last night and many officers were deployed today.

Vigils had already been banned in 2020 and 2021 in the name of the fight against Covid-19.

Then, last September, the Hong Kong Alliance (the

activist organization had organized the vigil for 30 years) had been shut down, its June 4 Museum closed and its leaders arrested.

For 33 years, the Chinese authorities have done everything possible to wipe Tiananmen from collective memory.

History books don't mention it.

Online discussions on this topic are systematically censored.

Facial recognition devices have been installed in Beijing on the streets leading to the square.

The police, lined up in large numbers, today carried out tight checks.

But while evoking the events of 1989 was always a taboo in China, Hong Kong was an exception until 2020. Beijing then imposed a draconian national security law on the self-governing region to stifle any dissent, following the gigantic pro-democracy protests of 2019. so,

local authorities worked to erase all traces of Tiananmen's memory.

(HANDLE).

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