For the second year in a row, the Hong Kong executive cordons off Victoria Park for the Tiananmen anniversary. No question of giving way to the vigil in memory of the Chinese student movement, which always took place in this enclosure before the turn of the screw and the adoption of the law on national security. This Saturday, June 4, the Hong Kong authorities are locking public freedoms a little more.
It’s a huge park: 19 hectares of greenery, six football pitches, a running track, basketball courts and a walkway that connects the lawn to the famous Hong Kong Central Library.
Every year since 1990, the pro-democracy movement has commemorated the deaths of students from Tiananmen in 1989. Which had the gift of making the caciques of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing sick.
But since the wave of repression that hit the special administrative region of Hong Kong, it has become a red line.
The association which organized these vigils had to self-dissolve under the pressure of the law on national security. And from 2020, under the pretext of the fight against Covid-19, the event was no longer authorized.
This year, the Hong Kong government is no longer even looking for excuses: the municipal services explain that due to the calls for demonstrations which are multiplying on social networks, Victoria Park will be closed until Sunday evening. Any gathering will be considered suspicious.
►To re-read: Tiananmen: one of the organizers of the remembrance vigil arrested in Hong Kong (2021)