HKFP: Explainer: Is it legal for people in Hong Kong to commemorate the Tiananmen crackdown?

On the anniversary of the crackdown, with police set to deploy in large numbers, HKFP rounds-up official responses as to whether it is legal, or not, to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen dead.

Sunday’s anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown is the first since Hong Kong lifted Covid-19 social distancing restrictions. In recent years, the authorities cited anti-epidemic measures as the reason to ban the annual candlelight commemoration in Victoria Park. But, despite arrests on Saturday, there remains no official word on whether a public vigil or commemoration would be legal in the wake of the Beijing-imposed national security law.

Before the pandemic and the implementation of the security law on June 30, 2020, Hong Kong – for decades – was one of very few places on Chinese soil that permitted public mourning of the crackdown, even though top officials had become more tight-lipped about the historical event.

The Tiananmen crackdown on June 4, 1989, ended months of student-led demonstrations in China. It is estimated that hundreds, perhaps thousands, died when the People’s Liberation Army dispersed protesters in Beijing.

The Victoria Park vigils were seen as a test of Hong Kong’s freedoms under its post-Handover semi-autonomous status, and objections to them in recent years focused not on their legality but on the necessity of recalling the past.

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Explainer: Is it legal for people in Hong Kong to commemorate the Tiananmen crackdown?