By Guardian staff and agencies in Hong Kong

On June 4, 2023

At least 20 people detained, including activist Alexandra Wong and leader of opposition party, as hundreds of police conduct stop and search operations

 This article is more than 1 month old

Hong Kong police arrest pro-democracy figures on Tiananmen Square anniversary

This article is more than 1 month old

At least 20 people detained, including activist Alexandra Wong and leader of opposition party, as hundreds of police conduct stop and search operations

Hong Kong police have detained more than 20 people, including prominent pro-democracy figures, on the 34th anniversary of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown in China, while Chinese authorities tightened access to Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.

Police in Hong Kong said late on Sunday they had detained 23 people between the ages of 20 to 74 who were suspected of “breaching the peace”. One woman, 53, was arrested for obstructing police officers.

Chan Po-ying, a veteran activist and head of the League of Social Democrats, was held briefly in a busy Hong Kong shopping district – an area that for years was the site of commemorations of the bloody 4 June 1989 crackdown in China.

Holding a small LED candle – a common sight during the annual vigil – and two flowers, Chan was seized by police and put into a van. According to her party, she was released about two hours later.

Near Victoria Park, hundreds of police conducted stop and search operations, and deployed armoured vehicles and police vans.

Other recognisable pro-democracy figures detained by police were Alexandra Wong, an activist nicknamed Grandma Wong; Mak Yin-ting, the former chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association; and Leo Tang, a former leader of the now disbanded Confederation of Trade Unions.

Another of the detained was a woman who shouted, “Raise candles! Mourn 64!” – shorthand for the sensitive date. Another was a young man dressed in black who carried a book titled “35th of May”, another way to refer to the date four days after 31 May in mainland China.

A reporter with a Hong Kong news outlet was heard saying “I didn’t do anything” as officers detained her.

Tsui Hon-kwong, a former member of Hong Kong Alliance – the group that had organised the annual Tiananmen vigil – was also removed while holding a LED candle.

The Associated Press put the number of detained at 32 across Saturday and Sunday.

In Beijing, additional security was seen around Tiananmen Square, which has long been ringed with security checks requiring those entering to show identification. People passing by foot or on bicycle on Changan Avenue running north of the square were also stopped and forced to show identification. Those with journalist visas in their passports were told they needed special permission to even approach the area.

Still, throngs of tourists were seen visiting the iconic site, with hundreds standing in line to enter the square.

For decades, Hong Kong was the only Chinese city with large-scale public commemoration of the Tiananmen events – a key index of liberties and political pluralism afforded to its semi-autonomous status.

Since 1990, an annual vigil had been held in Victoria Park, drawing tens of thousands to the candlelight memorial. But in 2020, a national security law was imposed on the city by Beijing to quell dissent, after huge and at times violent pro-democracy demonstrations rocked the finance hub. Since then, the vigil has been banned and its organisers arrested and charged under the security law.

Leading up to this year’s anniversary, officials repeatedly refused to confirm if public mourning of the event was illegal, saying only that “everyone should act in accordance with the law”.

Security is significantly tighter across Hong Kong this year, with up to 6,000 police deployed, including riot and anti-terrorism officers, according to local media.

Ahead of the anniversary, a group of mothers who lost their children in the Tiananmen crackdown sought redress and issued a statement renewing their call for “truth, compensation and accountability”.

“Though 34 years have passed, for us, family members of those killed, the pain of losing our loved ones in that one night has tormented us to this day,” the Tiananmen Mothers group said in a statement released by the New York-based watchdog Human Rights in China.

Discussion of the Tiananmen crackdown is highly sensitive for China’s communist leadership and commemoration is forbidden on the mainland.

The government sent troops and tanks to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 to break up peaceful protests, brutally crushing a weeks-long wave of demonstrations calling for political change. Hundreds – by some estimates, more than 1,000 – were killed.

Beijing has gone to exhaustive lengths to erase the 1989 event from public memory in the mainland. All mention of the crackdown is scrubbed from China’s internet.

Over the weekend, sites of more recent protests – a bridge in Beijing where a “Freedom” banner was unfurled, and Wulumuqi Road in Shanghai where demonstrations happened in November – also saw heightened security.

The restrictions in Hong Kong have left cities like Taipei, London, New York and Berlin to keep the memory of 4 June alive.

In democratically governed Taiwan, the last remaining part of the Chinese-speaking world where the anniversary can be marked freely, hundreds attended a memorial at Taipei’s Liberty Square, where a commemorative “Pillar of Shame” statue was displayed.

In Sydney, one of over 30 places in North America, Europe and Asia hosting commemoration events, dozens of demonstrators rallied at the Town Hall, chanting “free Hong Kong”, while holding up yellow umbrellas, the symbol of pro-democracy protests since 2014, and placards.

The British embassy in Beijing posted the 4 June 1989 front page of China’s mouthpiece People’s Daily, which carried a small report saying hospitals were inundated with casualties. Within 20 minutes, censors removed the news, the embassy tweeted on Sunday.

Hong Kong authorities were vigilant in the weeks before 4 June, with police seizing a Pillar of Shame statue for a security trial and books on the Tiananmen crackdown removed from public libraries.

Debby Chan, a former pro-democracy district councillor, said last week that police had called her to ask about her 4 June plans after she announced on Facebook that she would hand out free candles, which are seen as representing a vigil.

Agence France-Presse, Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

This piece was republished from The Guardian.