An independent bookshop was raided, while its owner and her husband were arrested; subsidiary legislation for the local security law was enacted; and activists were taken away during the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown anniversary.
Last month marked six years since the Beijing-imposed national security law took effect in Hong Kong.
The crackdown continued in June: an independent bookshop was raided, while its owner and her husband were arrested; activists and ordinary people were stopped and taken away in Causeway Bay on the 37th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown; a construction worker was sentenced to 10 months in jail after throwing “seditious leaflets” from his public housing unit, which led him to lose his flat.
Meanwhile, the government continued to update national security laws, giving the chief executive the power to certify any criminal act as a national security case.
June 4: Activists stopped, people taken away
On June 4 – the 37th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown – activists showed up in Causeway Bay. They defied a heavy police deployment at and around Victoria Park, the former site of Hong Kong’s annual commemorative Tiananmen vigils.
Large numbers of uniformed and plainclothes officers were seen in the park and around Causeway Bay that day.
At around 5pm, activist Lui Yuk-lin walked from Great George Street in Causeway Bay towards Victoria Park. She pressed her hands, wrapped in a black cloth, in a prayer gesture, while chanting the Great Compassion Mantra.
Another woman was seen gesturing “six” and “four” with her hands at around 6pm on Great George Street in Causeway Bay, The Collective reported. Police officers at the scene warned her that her behaviour could be “seditious”. They pressed her hands down and took her away in a police vehicle.
At around 6.30pm, Chan Po-ying, chairperson of the now-defunct League of Social Democrats, a pro-democracy party, appeared in Causeway Bay with a yellow paper flower.
Police at the scene warned Chan that her behaviour might constitute “disorder in public places” and told her to put the flower in her bag.
A young man in a black T-shirt was intercepted by police after he put on a blindfold and used a red marker pen to write on his arm outside the Sogo department store at around 7.15pm.
Police said a total of seven people – five men and two women, aged 17 to 79 – in Causeway Bay had been taken away in Causeway Bay on June 4. They were suspected of “disrupting order” near Great George Street and East Point Road.
