Tens of thousands of demonstrators crowded into a Hong Kong park Friday to mark the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre with a candlelight vigil, songs and exhortations to build a democratic China.
Organizers said 82,000 people attended the event, while police put the number at about 50,000. The crowd, which included many families and young people, stretched the entire quarter-mile length of Hong Kong’s Victoria Park.
In Beijing, police equipped with metal detectors and nightsticks guarded every entrance to the Chinese capital’s main square, but the number of visitors was lighter than usual because of intermittent drizzle throughout much of the day.
No violence was reported.
Most of those who gathered in Hong Kong sat quietly in neat rows, holding candles as they listened to videotaped speeches by former mainland protest leaders and local politicians urging them to defend democracy.
The June 4 vigil is an annual ritual in Hong Kong, a time when thousands of the territory’s residents pause to mourn those who died when the military crushed a nascent pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989. However, those who come regularly said this remembrance was by far the largest of recent years.
A large number of young Hong Kong residents were there for the first time, or were attending again after having skipped the last few commemorations. Many expressed concern that the democratic freedoms they have enjoyed under the terms of the territory’s 1997 transfer from British control to Chinese rule are under threat.
“If people stay silent, we may lose the right to come here,” said Paul Yan, a 31-year-old music producer who said he was attending the vigil for the first time in more than a decade.
Hong Kong legislator Lee Cheuk-yan told the crowd, “This year in Hong Kong, the sky is getting cloudier.”
Lee, deputy chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movement in China, warned that Beijing is likely to increase pressure on those pushing for fully democratic elections in the territory.
“We are ready to brace for this storm,” he said.
In Beijing, police vans, unmarked police cars and buses were parked around Tiananmen Square. Plainclothes and uniformed officers crisscrossed the square, stopping anyone they deemed suspicious.
But for most of those who came to visit the symbolic heart of China, it was just another day.
“So today is June 4,” said Guo Qingshuang, 20, a travel agent working in Beijing, as she sat holding a newspaper in Tiananmen Square. “I’ve heard about the date, but I’m not sure why it’s important. It’s probably in some history book I’ve forgotten.”
