Asia Pacific
Crowds Gather in Hong Kong for Anniversary of Tiananmen Crackdown
Tens of Thousands in Hong Kong Remember Tiananmen Protests
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/05/world/asia/crowds-gather-in-hong-kong-to-mark-25th-anniversary-of-tiananmen-killings.html?_r=0
Credit Philippe Lopez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
HONG KONG — Tens of thousands gathered at a central park in Hong Kong on Wednesday to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, even as a stifling security presence in Beijing and elsewhere in mainland China appeared to forestall protests.
The
organizers of the vigil in Hong Kong said the crowd on Wednesday
numbered over 180,000, while the police estimated that 99,500 people had
attended. The turnout on Wednesday was the largest since 1989,
according to the organizers, and the second-largest, according to police
estimates, trailing the 2010 turnout, which was 113,000.
State-controlled
Chinese news organizations largely ignored the anniversary, even as the
foreign news media gave it global attention. In Washington, the White
House said in a statement, “Twenty-five years later, the United States
continues to honor the memories of those who gave their lives in and
around Tiananmen Square and throughout China, and we call on Chinese
authorities to account for those killed, detained or missing in
connection with the events surrounding June 4, 1989.”
Tiananmen Vigils in Hong Kong and Taiwan
Outside mainland China, tens of thousands of
people gathered to mark the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters
25 years ago in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Credit Philippe Lopez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In
the years since the crackdown, mainland China has combined rapid
economic growth with severe and recently increasing restrictions on
civil liberties. In the weeks preceding the anniversary, the Chinese
police detained and in some cases prosecuted scores of human rights
activists.
Online
censors have stepped up their already extensive blocking or deleting of
websites and postings that challenge the Communist Party’s effort to
erase the public’s memory of the bloodshed in 1989, when soldiers in
Beijing killed hundreds of students, workers and professionals
demonstrating for greater democracy and limits on corruption.
The
crowd that gathered Wednesday night in Victoria Park in Hong Kong was
visibly younger than in previous years and included, for the first time,
Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, a widely admired Roman Catholic priest who
in the past had held prayers near the commemoration but had not taken
part.
Nicholas Kristof on Tiananmen Square
Nicholas Kristof remembers the unlikely heroes of the protests 25 years ago.
Credit
In
recent years, the gathering had been dominated by people age 40 or
older who remembered coverage of the night of the crackdown and who
sometimes brought their children. That demographic profile appeared to
have been upended this year, as people in their 20s and 30s
predominated. An announcer on the stage asked all those attending the
vigil for the first time to raise their hands, and many sprang up.
One
first-time attendee, Rex Liu, a 27-year-old office worker, said that
although he felt regret that students had died 25 years ago, he was
motivated more by concern about the prevalence of corruption in
current-day China. “I feel the need to come this year to express my
discontent over the rotting and corrupt state of the Chinese
government,” he said.
The
general silence about the anniversary that security agencies imposed in
mainland China left Hong Kong as the only city on Chinese soil where
such a public commemoration could take place.
Asked
during a brief interview near the end of the vigil whether he was
attending the event as a church leader, Cardinal Zen, the retired
archbishop of Hong Kong and a longtime advocate of greater democracy,
gave a small shrug and a short, amused laugh. “No, no, no, I am myself,”
he said.
Xinhua,
China’s state-run news agency, published an article on Wednesday
quoting a government spokesman criticizing the United Nations’ high
commissioner for human rights, who called on Tuesday for Beijing to
release pro-democracy activists and others who have been detained.
“The
so-called press release made by U.N. high commissioner for human
rights, Navi Pillay, grossly goes against her mandate and constitutes a
grave intervention of China’s judicial sovereignty and internal
affairs,” Hong Lei, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a daily news
briefing, according to the Xinhua report. Ms. Pillay had released a statement
on the anniversary calling on China to free dissidents. “China has
chosen a viable path to develop human rights, and this is not to be
changed by any discordant voice,” Mr. Hong added.
Among
those who had assembled around Victoria Park was one man defending the
armed crackdown. He held a sign in Chinese that read: “Oppose
overturning the verdict on June 4; the democracy movement is a menace to
national tranquillity. Without a prompt crackdown, China would not be
what it is today.”
The man, Chiu Keng Wong, a Hong Kong resident and camera dealer, said he was in China in 1989.
“People
don’t understand the situation back then,” he said. “This had to be
done to defend reform and opening up. Older people who have spent time
in China understand my view.”
Several
groups in Hong Kong allied with the Beijing government have tried to
make the case that dwelling on June 4 is politically unhealthy, and one
of them, the Voice of Loving Hong Kong, held a small gathering near
Victoria Park. Guarded by a phalanx of police officers and metal
barriers, the group had a banner urging the people of Hong Kong to “let
go of this burden.”
The
democracy movement in Hong Kong has fractured over how to deal with
Beijing’s steadfast refusal to change its official stance on the
Tiananmen Square crackdown, and over Beijing’s reluctance to allow
greater democracy in Hong Kong itself. The clearest sign of that
division was a separate protest Wednesday evening on the opposite side
of the harbor from the Victoria Park candlelight vigil, which has been
held every year since 1989.
The
rival event, which the police said attracted 3,060 people, was
organized by the Proletariat Political Institute, a group led by Wong
Yuk-man, a democracy activist who is also on the 70-member Legislative
Council. He contends that the established pro-democracy parties are not
sufficiently assertive in challenging Beijing.
“The
vigil has been held for more than two decades, and the significance of
the vigil is diminishing,” Mr. Wong’s group said in a statement Tuesday
evening. “It is now no more than a routine ceremonial event.”
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