Hong Kong: 1.7m people defy police to march in pouring rain

A quarter of the population fill downtown park and surrounding streets

By Verna Yu and Lily Kuo in Hong Kong

Demonstrators carry umbrellas as they march along a street in Hong Kong on Sunday in defiance of a police ban. 

An estimated 1.7 million people in Hong Kong – a quarter of the population – defied police orders to stage a peaceful march after a rally in a downtown park, after two months of increasingly violent clashes that have prompted severe warnings from Beijing and failed to win concessions from the city’s government.
Huge crowds filled Victoria Park on Sunday afternoon and spilled on to nearby streets, forcing police to block traffic in the area. 

Torrential rain came down an hour into the rally, turning the park into a sea of umbrellas. 

At the same time, protesters walked towards Central, the heart of Hong Kong’s business district, and surrounded government headquarters.
Police had turned down a plan for Sunday’s march submitted by the Civil Human Rights Front group and gave permission only for a rally in the park. 

Those defying the ban risked being charged with unlawful assembly, which can lead to up to five years in prison.
“Stand with Hong Kong! Fight for freedom!” protesters shouted at the rally.
Throughout the afternoon, streets around Victoria Park were so densely packed that the march frequently came to a complete standstill. 

Some protesters walked on to a flyover near the park as the crowds on the streets were unable to move.
Protesters were orderly but burst into choruses of slogans as they waited to move forward. 

“Hong Kong people, go!”, “Reclaim Hong Kong, revolution of our era!” they chanted.
Observers saw Sunday’s rally, the largest in weeks, as a test of the movement’s momentum and public support as tensions between police and protesters have escalated.
“Even though the weather was so bad, even in the face of threats of the People’s Liberation Army and water cannons, Hong Kong people never back down,” said Wong, 21, a university student.
Wong did not expect this to be the last major rally. 

“For as long as the government doesn’t respond, there will only be more large-scale protests.”
US president Donald Trump said on Sunday he wanted to see the crisis resolved peacefully, warning against any hardline crackdown.
“I’d like to see Hong Kong worked out in a very humanitarian fashion … I hope Xi Jinping can do it… he sure has the ability, I can tell you that.
“I think it’d be very hard to deal if they do violence, I mean, if it’s another Tiananmen Square,” Trump told reporters in New Jersey. 

“I think it’s a very hard thing to do if there’s violence.”

Protesters holding umbrellas march in an anti-government rally in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. 

Organisers of the rally, who estimated that 1.7 million people turned up at the park and in the nearby Causeway Bay and Tin Hau areas, said many more were unable to get there. 

Train services to the metro stations near the park were suspended intermittently throughout the day due to the huge numbers of people.
The crowd was a mix of young protesters, families and elderly residents. 

Parents walked alongside small children.
By early evening, protesters occupied a six-lane road outside the government in Admiralty, shining lasers at the building and the nearby People’s Liberation Army garrison and yelling insults at the police. 

After convoys of police vans were seen entering the government complex, protesters called for a retreat and the crowd gradually dispersed.

Protesters faced heavy rain during Sunday’s rally. 

A statement from the force late on Sunday condemned the protesters and accused them of paralysing traffic in the area.
As protesters marched past the police headquarters, they chanted, “Return the eye!” referring to a recent incident in which a young woman’s eye was badly injured during the protests. 

Both the government and police headquarters were surrounded by giant water-filled barricades.
In the early evening, a number of protesters ignored the organisers’ advice to leave after reaching Central and continued to march west towards the Chinese government’s liaison office, where previous protests have ended in violent clashes. 

Dozens of riot police officers armed with shields and guns were seen patrolling the area.

People march during a rally to demand democracy and political reforms in Hong Kong. 

Organisers insist that the Hong Kong government must stop using the police force to suppress them and respond to their five political demands, including the complete withdrawal of the now suspended extradition bill – under which individuals can be sent to China for trial – the setting up of an independent body to investigate police violence, and universal suffrage (the free election of Hong Kong’s leaders).

'An eye for an eye': Hong Kong protests get figurehead in woman injured by police.

A late-night government statement said although the protests were peaceful, they caused inconvenience to the community. 

The statement said it was “most important” to restore social order and “the government will begin sincere dialogue with the public, mend social rifts and rebuild social harmony when everything has calmed down”.
The Civil Human Rights Front had earlier called for a “peaceful, rational and non-violent” rally and online posts urged “self discipline and calmness” after 10 weeks of intensive protests, many of which have ended in violent clashes as police increasingly employed teargas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.

Chinese paramilitary police officers go through drills at the Shenzhen Bay stadium on Sunday. 

“China is taking over Hong Kong. Our society has no justice and no future. We’re just making a last-ditch attempt to do something amid our despondency,” said Carol Lui, a teacher in her 30s. 

“Hong Kong is dying anyway, so we are just fighting to our last breath.”
Hong Kong had its first teargas-free Saturday for weeks after three separate rallies took place in Kowloon. 

The marches this Saturday and Sunday marked the 11th weekend of protests in Hong Kong.
Tensions reached a new level during the past week. 

Following last weekend’s violent clashes with police, protesters occupied Hong Kong’s airport. 

Over the past week, state media outlets have published videos showing armoured Chinese troop carriers purportedly driving into Shenzhen, the south-eastern state that borders Hong Kong.
Chinese officials have also released a series of threatening statements about Hong Kong’s protesters, with one claiming “terrorism” was emerging in the city after flights were cancelled.

Hong Kong: three rallies mark 11th weekend of protests

Despite the call for peace on Sunday, some protesters have warned that the protests could turn violent again if the government continues to ignore their demands.
“Violent escalation is an extreme measure … but if it is effective, we would continue, because we need to try all means to attract attention to our cause,” said a 25-year-old engineer wearing full protective gear who gave his surname as Fan.

30th Anniversary

30 Years Later, Hong Kong Still Harbors the Spirit of Tiananmen
BY LAIGNEE BARRON / HONG KONG

The center of one of the densest metropolises in the world fell momentarily quiet Tuesday night, as well over a hundred thousand people gathered in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park bowed their heads and held flickering candles to observe a minute of silence commemorating the bloodshed around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
For the last 30 years, Hong Kongers have held an annual march and candlelight vigil to remind the world of the night the Communist Party unleashed its tanks in response to protesters calling for political change. 

No one knows how many died — the official count is a secret — but it’s widely believed that thousands were slaughtered as soldiers moved to crush the seven-week democracy movement.
The Tiananmen Square massacre forever changed China, and, arguably, the world. 

But three decades later, the anniversary remains taboo on the mainland, an event off-limits to nearly one-fifth of the planet. 

Today, semi-autonomous Hong Kong is the only place on Chinese soil that can openly stage large-scale memorials.
“You are not here anymore but you continue to live through every single candle in Victoria park,” Chow Hang-tung, one of the event’s organizers and vice chairman of the pro-Democracy Hong Kong Alliance, said in a eulogy to the victims before an audience filling the park with dim, wavering light. 

“Through every anti-establishment activity we hold, through the hearts of those who fight for democracy, you will live on.”

Pro-democracy protesters hold candles on stage during a vigil in Hong Kong on June 4, 2019, to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing.

Hong Kong still exercises many freedoms unimaginable on the mainland, but these practices have slowly ebbed under the gravitational force of Beijing. 

Many wonder how long the Communist Party will continue to tolerate publicly defiant acts like the park’s massive vigil. 

Despite spitting weather and a government warning about thunderstorms issued just ahead of the event, Hong Kongers young and old crammed into the park for the emotionally charged vigil. Organizers estimate that more than 180,000 people joined this year; the 30th anniversary brought some who had never previously attended, in addition to those who reliably turn up every year.
Candy Chan, 35, has attended the vigil every year for the past decade. 

She is native to Hong Kong, and was only a child when the Tiananmen protests took place, but she feels it’s important to keep the memory alive by exercising her right to commemorate and teaching her daughter about the past. 

“Hong Kong is the only place [in China] to express freedom,” she tells TIME. 

“If no one comes out, youngsters will forget this incident.”
Joyce Dang, a civil servant who is also from Hong Kong, remembers following the news reports closely in 1989. 

She was in college at the time, and recalls feeling shocked and unable to sleep. 

“For those of us who experienced the event, the memories cannot be erased,” she says, but she worries that the freedom to publicly honor the memory in Hong Kong may not always be guaranteed.
This year’s anniversary took on additional significance in Hong Kong. 

Fears are running high over proposed revisions to an extradition law that would make it easier for criminal suspects to face trial on the mainland. 

Critics say the changes will erode the independence of the city’s once-robust legal system, and aid Beijing in targeting political foes. 

The threat of having to face retribution on the mainland could also have a chilling effect, and silence the full-throated criticisms of the Communist regime that frequently ring out at protests.
John Tsui, a member of the League of Social Democrats political party, likened passing the law to “essentially putting a knife over the heads of everyone in Hong Kong,” claiming it was designed as a means of “restricting the freedom of speech in Hong Kong and freedom to protest, basically anything Beijing doesn’t like.”
“It is going to be used to target anyone not to the PRCs liking,” he tells TIME.
Hong Kong has long been a safe harbor for polarizing political figures, from Sun Yat-Sen and his revolutionaries to Vietnam’s communist leader Ho Chi Minh to American whistle-blower Edward Snowden. 

During the heady days of idealism that preceded the Tiananmen crackdown, Hong Kong raised funds for the pro-democracy protests. 

After Beijing began rounding up protest ringleaders, city activists successfully smuggled out more than 400 in a covert effort known as “Operation Yellowbird.”
The city’s reputation as a place of refuge has already diminished after it returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. 

If the extradition law is passed, as is likely in the coming weeks, it could erase “the firewall between Hong Kong and the mainland,” says Albert Ho, chair of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which helped orchestrate Operation Yellowbird and now runs the annual Tiananmen vigil.
At the time of the Tiananmen massacre, Hong Kong, then a British colony, saw the gunfire and feared for its future under Chinese rule. 

According to the 1997 handover terms, Beijing agreed to maintain the city’s autonomy for 50 years under a governing arrangement known as “one country, two systems.” 

But Beijing’s perceived interference in the city’s political affairs, from the election of the city’s chief executive to the banning of political parties that run afoul of the Communist government, has raised doubts that the deal will hold and deep concerns about what will happen when it expires.
More than two decades after the Union Jack came down, Hong Kong is a city stewing in political disenchantment after its own homegrown democracy movement failed to sway Beijing. 

The 2014 Umbrella Revolution choked major thoroughfares in the financial hub for 79 days and posed the greatest challenge to Beijing’s authority since Tiananmen, but ultimately, it did not win any major concessions.

Pro-democracy protesters face police forces during clashes at a pro-democracy rally in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong on Nov. 30, 2014.

Recent events have reinforced fears of Beijing’s tightening grasp. 

The expulsion of a foreign journalist for hosting a politically charged talk, two Hong Kong activists being granted asylum overseas, and a law that would criminalize disrespecting the national anthem have all stoked a sense of what some might call political apathy, while others see it as pragmatism. Others simply grew up living a life divorced from politics.
Daisy Lee, an 18-year-old recent high school graduate, said what happened at Tiananmen is now “in the past.” 

Like some other pedestrians mixed in with the masses moving slowly through the busy Causeway Bay neighborhood toward Victoria Park, she said she was just here to do some shopping with a friend and got caught up in the crowd. 

“We don’t care about it, it doesn’t affect us,” Lee tells TIME, annoyed by the crowds. 

“I think it’s too many people, I don’t like it.”
Even among the city’s pro-democracy faction the Tiananmen anniversary creates friction. 

Some see Hong Kong as linguistically and culturally distinct from the mainland, and advocate for focusing on local issues rather than meddling in the history and political sensitivities across the border.
During this year’s anniversary, several student unions decided to revive a forum on the future of Hong Kong instead of participating in the yearly vigil.
Others, including many of the former student campaigners who led the charge during the Umbrella Revolution, see a moral compunction in taking part in the vigil. 

Even though they were born after Tiananmen, they too are familiar with the consequences of resisting Beijing.
Dozens of activists have been convicted for their role in the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong. During last year’s anniversary, Joshua Wong, the student activist who shot to international fame during the 2014 protests, stressed the importance of remembering June 4th. 

This year, he is once again behind bars.
The massive turnout for the Tuesday night vigil suggests that the struggle — at least this corner of China — may be tarnished, but is certainly not forgotten. 

Crowds burst into impassioned chants of “We want justice!” and “Let’s build a democratic China!” Singers sang, and survivors spoke.
Liane Li wasn’t even supposed to be in Beijing on June 4th, she tells the attentive crowd. 

She was just a college student in Hong Kong when she heard about the movement for Democracy that was swelling in cities across China, so she went to Beijing at the height of the protests to show her solidarity. 

She said she was warned that authorities would soon clear the square. 

“But we were in alliance with the Beijing students that were fighting so hard for democracy,” she said, “so we went ahead anyway.”
It wasn’t long before she heard the guns begin to fire; soon there were wounded people everywhere. A medic approached her and told her to flee, begging her to spread the word about the horrors she saw. 

“Go get help, go home to Hong Kong,” she recalled the woman pleading. 

“Tell the world what our government is doing.”

1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre

Hong Kong Vigil demands an “end to one-party dictatorship.” 

By David Tweed
Demonstrators attend a candlelight vigil at Victoria Park in Hong Kong on June 4

For 28 years, tens of thousands of Hong Kong democracy advocates have marked the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown by rallying for political change in China. 

This year, they face new risk in doing so.
At issue are a series of slogans chanted during a mass candlelight vigil in Victoria Park, specifically one demanding an “end to one-party dictatorship.” 

That act of defiance has come under new scrutiny after the former top Chinese official in Hong Kong suggested that those who utter the phrase should be barred from running for office.
While government officials haven’t endorsed the view, pro-democracy lawmakers worry that such remarks could represent the latest Communist Party effort to curb free expression in the former British colony. 

In 2016, the Chinese government banned independence activists from public office and local officials earlier this year barred a legislative candidate from running because she supported “self-determination.”
“When you look around, the political space in Hong Kong is much tighter than it was even three or four years ago,” said Chris Ng, a convener of the Progressive Lawyers Group, which seeks to preserve Hong Kong’s rule of law. 

“Beijing’s incursions on Hong Kong’s freedoms might not look like much on their own, but when you put them all together they are going to be fatal.”

Curbing Dissent
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s office didn’t immediately respond to an email and phone call seeking comment Monday.
The June 4 vigil -- commemorating the military crackdown on student protesters in Beijing in 1989 -- stands as an annual reminder of China’s pledge to preserve colonial-era freedoms and institutions in Hong Kong. 

Last year, more than 100,000 people gathered on a sweltering evening to hear speeches, sing protest songs and view images of the Tiananmen Square bloodshed.
In recent weeks, some pro-Beijing officials have suggested the arguments used to bar “separatists” from public office could extend to those who advocate an end to one-party rule in China. 

The idea -- proposed in March by the city’s sole representative to the national legislature’s -- has been endorsed by Wang Guangya, the former top official for Hong Kong affairs. 

Such moves could threaten even sitting lawmakers, since China’s National People’s Congress stepped in 2016 to apply strict new standards for officials’ oaths retroactively.
Public discussion of the Tiananmen incident is banned on the mainland and Xi Jinping has tightened controls on dissent since taking power in 2012, jailing scores of activists and lawyers. 

Xi has shown less patience for Hong Kong’s activists, as well, warning during a July visit that challenges to the party’s rule won’t be tolerated.
China’s approach has undermined faith in the “one country, two systems” framework government officials and businesses credit with maintaining Hong Kong’s status as an international financial center. 

A survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong released Wednesday found that just more than half of 230 members who responded believed there had been some erosion in the model.
A U.S. State Department report also released last week said that Xi’s statements and other officials had “diluted” the “high degree of autonomy” outlined in the city’s charter.

“As China becomes more repressive politically, it will only get worse,” said Sonny Lo, a professor of political science at the HKU School of Professional and Continuing Education. 

Things are “drifting toward ‘one country, one system’ in the minds of both Beijing officials and Hong Kong authorities,” Lo said.
Beijing loyalists argue moves to rein in Hong Kong’s most radical activists were necessary after dozens of police were injured in a riot involving independence activists in 2016. 

The democratic opposition has also frustrated China’s efforts to integrate the city by using protests and parliamentary maneuvering to block proposals.
Still, the city’s democratic lawmakers were expected to defy the call. 

A survey by the local Ming Pao newspaper found 23 out of 24 opposition lawmakers who participated planned to attend the vigil and join the chants, with the 25th objecting to the event on the grounds that Hong Kong residents should focus on local issues.
Albert Ho, a former lawmaker and chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, the vigil organizer, predicted that Beijing wouldn’t enforce the ban because doing so risked contradicting its own claims to “multiparty cooperation.” 

There also would be a cost to China’s international reputation, Ho said.
“Once you pass a law seeking to punish anyone for criticizing the Communist Party, then it would be a fundamental change in policy,” he said. 

“I won’t say they won’t do it, but the price would be very high.”

28th anniversary

Tens of Thousands in Hong Kong Commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre
By Kevin Lui / Hong Kong

For the 28th year in succession, a sea of light illuminated Hong Kong's Victoria Park on the evening of June 4 in commemoration of the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing.
Tens of thousands of people gathered Sunday night local time to remember the day when China's Communist government deployed tanks and troops in the heart of Beijing to put weeks of pro-democracy student protests to a bloody end. 

The number of fatalities remains unknown but is generally thought to be in the thousands.
By 8:25pm, six adjacent soccer fields had been filled with demonstrators braving the hot and muggy weather, forcing latecomers to spill over onto nearby lawns.
Organizers estimated that 110,000 people had gathered, according to public broadcaster RTHK. 

They held up candles and backlit smartphone screens in the night sky, chanted democracy slogans, and sang songs. 

People posed for photos by a replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue first erected in Beijing 28 years ago. 

Wreaths were laid for the Tiananmen dead and a minute's silence held.
Janet Chan, a 26-year-old marketing executive, said she had come to Victoria Park to "commemorate the sacrifice." 

She told TIME: "We fight for democracy in China and Hong Kong".
Ken Chiu, a teacher in his 30s, came with his wife and two young children. 

"It's education through action, to let them know what happened," says Chiu, who adds that he was a schoolchild himself when the massacre took place and remembers his teacher breaking down in front of the class the day after.
"My [10-year-old] son now starts asking me what happened back then," Chiu says.

From the stage, speakers condemned the communist regime in Beijing. 

"China is strong but the people are weak, corruption is rife — is this the country of the people?" asked lawyer and former legislator Albert Ho to loud applause. 

The chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, the vigil's main organizer, Ho said the people of Hong Kong had demonstrated their "strong and firm will" 28 years in succession.
Several activists, mostly students, exhorted vigil participants to march on Beijing's representative office in Hong Kong at the conclusion of the vigil. 

Hundreds left by the park's western entrance, defying large numbers of police who informed them that the march was illegal.
They were allowed to proceed to the office, where they chanted slogans and laid out incense and food offerings at the office's door, before dispersing largely in peace. 

One demonstrator burned a Communist Party flag with anti-party slogans written across it.

'The start of the fight for democracy'
Public discussion about Tiananmen has always been suppressed in China. 

Hong Kong — a British colony until it was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 — remains the only place under Beijing's effective jurisdiction that allows open memorialization of the crackdown.
But much has changed between now and 1989. 

In the past few years, Hong Kong has become a city seething with political discontent and has even witnessed the emergence of separatist and pro-independence sentiment.
The democracy movement launched a massive push for greater freedoms in 2014, with the 79-day street protests known as the Umbrella Revolution.
Then, two pro-independence activists found themselves briefly elected to the city's legislature, before being ejected by a court at both the local administration and Beijing's behest. 

Attempts to unseat a few more legislators with democratic or separatist leanings are currently underway.
Now, a new leader is about to assume office, facing a populace more disgruntled and resigned than ever and the narrow manner of her election, while opposition activists are facing court cases for acts of civil disobedience.

Against the backdrop, the meaning of the annual June 4 vigil is shifting, especially among the city's younger generation.
"June 4 is, in fact, like the Umbrella Movement of the last century in terms of its significance," said Joshua Wong, the student activist who shot to international fame during the 2014 protests.
"Ten years ago, many Hong Kong people would have thought of June 4 as the start of the fight for democracy," he told TIME, stressing the importance of its commemoration.
"I want to mourn those who sacrificed for democracy," 20-year-old student Aily Wing told TIME, "to show that there are those in Hong Kong who have not forgotten this."

Participants hold candles during a vigil to mark the 28th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing at Hong Kong's Victoria Park, on June 4, 2017. 

Many young people in Hong Kong, however, do not share those sentiments, regarding China as a mere "next-door country" whose political struggles need not concern them explained Yuen Chan, a journalism instructor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).
"The feeling is not only that 'it hasn't got anything to do with me,' but it's [also] seen as a kind of sentimental indulgence, almost, obstructing Hongkongers from achieving real autonomy, because [people are] mired in this memory, this linkage to the mainland,” she said.
To be sure, bickering over the anniversary's local significance and relevance is nothing new, but the animosity and heated rhetoric in earlier years appear to be replaced by indifference and apathy this year from parties who are otherwise engaged in the fight for democracy, freedom and autonomy.
On June 4 last year, 11 tertiary student unions held meetings on Hong Kong identity instead of attending the candlelight vigil. 

Of those local media notes this year that almost half aren't marking the date at all.
The 110,000 attendance figure put out by the organizers, while not inconsiderable, is thought to be the lowest for some years.
“The 1989 student movement and massacre definitely carry specific meanings for different generations and for Hong Kong, but we’re starting to see its significance fade among youngsters,” said Thomas Lee, external secretary of CUHK's student union.
"We [separatists] are not going to deny that this is a tragedy or a case where a dictatorial regime massacres its own people," said Chan Ho-tin, convenor of the pro-independence Hong Kong National Party. 

"It’s a crime against humanity, this needs no arguing."
But for youngsters who "didn’t experience this firsthand, it’s something very distant," he continued. "Second, we don’t think we’re Chinese. So that’s a great difference from those Hong Kong people who continue to attend the [candlelight] vigil" out of an emotional connection.

'A signal to the outside world'
But for the old guard, the act of remembrance at Victoria Park remains powerful as ever.
Commemorating Tiananmen "has something to do with humanity, with upholding certain universal values," said Ho the vigil organizer.
What's more, the vigil "is a signal to the outside world about the tolerance level of Beijing to Hong Kong,” he told TIME.
He noted that recent attempt by Beijing to try steer Hong Kong’s education system to a more patriotic direction and stern warnings against secessionism “give the signal that the freedom we’ve been enjoying in the civil society will be threatened or curtailed.”
The extent to which these pressures can be sustained "depend on our determination, will power [and] commitment," said Ho.
All agree that the task of resisting Beijing's encroachment is daunting
"What 1989 revealed to the public of Hong Kong, in political terms, is that the Chinese government doesn’t allow for any space for compromise or negotiation,” Wong told TIME.
"As long as you live in Hong Kong, in the face of a communist regime exercising jurisdiction over you, you need to know its history, how it crushed protests in the past."