“Facts have proven that the development we have chosen meets the fundamental interest of China and Chinese people and satisfy the aspiration of entire Chinese nation”, Hua said, referring to China’s becoming the world’s second largest economy next only to the US.
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A resident of Sichuan was also arrested this week for selling alcohol with labels that read “89-4 June” and images of tanks, according to Hong Kong-based media. Police did not immediately give a crowd estimate.
Some student groups have backed the vigil saying the Tiananmen protests and crackdown helped politicise a new generation and have organised forums to explain its impact to Hong Kongers.
But now there’s a growing backlash – in the form of a boycott – against the candlelight vigil among democracy advocates who say they need to focus more on Hong Kong’s own struggle for democracy.
“It’s far better, they say, to concentrate on local Hong Kong issues and political development here, but as the organisers of this rally would argue, Hong Kong politics and the politics of mainland China are so closely linked you can not have development of one without the other”, McBride said. Saturday marks the 27th anniversary of China’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. One group even denounced the vigil organizers – members of the Hong Kong Alliance – as “pimps in a brothel”.
Speaking at Victoria Park, Jonathan Chan, an HKFS officer at the time of the massacre, denounced today’s students for abandoning the vigil, saying he would never attend an alternative event.
People in Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule under a deal to preserve wide-ranging freedoms in 1997, marked the anniversary on Saturday evening with a candlelit vigil.
The pro-independence Hong Kong National Party added that, while young people still feel sorry for the students killed in 1989, “they don’t share the same memory of Chinese identity with the older generation”.
“This event is not ideal, but it still has meaning”.
Police checked IDs and searched the bags on Saturday of everyone entering the the vast public space in the centre of the capital where thousands of students, workers and ordinary citizens gathered in 1989 to demand political reforms.
On the other side of the Taiwan Strait, a smaller vigil was organized at Taipei’s Liberty Square, drawing around 200 participants. “This spirit will not be crushed under machine guns and tanks”.
“We have to support the (victims of the massacre) and make the Chinese government account for what they did”, he said. Journalists from The Associated Press were stopped, filmed and ultimately forced to leave the area, ostensibly for lacking proper permission.
With the anniversary looming, security in China has been tightened and victims’ family members have been placed under additional restrictions. At least half a dozen people have reportedly been detained in recent days for attempting to commemorate the events.
In Washington, the U.S. State Department called for a “full public accounting of those killed, detained, or missing and for an end to censorship of discussions about the events of June 4, 1989, as well as an end to harassment and detention of those who wish to peacefully commemorate the anniversary”.
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Asked on Friday about the anniversary, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China had “long ago reached a clear conclusion about the political turmoil at the end of 1980s and other related issues”.
