FOR 30 YEARS Hong Kong held the world’s greatest vigil for the Tiananmen Sq. bloodbath. As many as 180,000 individuals would collect to gentle candles in Victoria Park to recollect June 4th 1989, when China’s military introduced a bloody finish to weeks of peaceable pro-democracy protests in Beijing. (China has by no means put a determine on the quantity who died in what it phrases a counter-revolutionary incident.) Hong Kong’s vigils grew to become a logo of defiance of mainland authority and an ardent evocation of town’s independence. “It was magnificent,” says one resident. “We wished to make [the massacre] recognized, not simply in Hong Kong, however all through the world.”
Organising such a vigil can be unthinkable now. The commemoration was banned in 2020, ostensibly due to covid-19. Some 20,000 individuals gathered anyway. The next month the central authorities in Beijing imposed a draconian national-security legislation on the territory, a response to giant pro-democracy protests in 2019. The authorities have since snuffed out reminiscences of Tiananmen. Memorials have been eliminated. The commemoration’s organisers have been jailed; in March they misplaced a bid to overturn their conviction. Sporting black or lighting candles close to Victoria Park on June 4th might now be thought of prison exercise. This yr, just like the final, the park is crammed with meals vans as a substitute of candles. Professional-Beijing teams have organised a carnival within the vigil’s stead.
