“Turn on some lights, wherever you are: whether it’s your mobile phone or candles”, Chow Hang Tung wrote yesterday on Facebook. This morning, at dawn, four plainclothes policemen showed up in front of the headquarters of the Hong Kong Alliance, the association of which Chow is vice president, and which every year organizes the great vigil in Victoria Park, in the heart of the former British colony , to commemorate the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Arrested on suspicion of promoting an unauthorized meeting, Chow was loaded into a black sedan and taken away. In fact, this year too – like last year – the Hong Kong authorities have banned any form of memory of that June 4, 1989, 32 years ago, when army tanks entered the heart of Beijing to suppress student protests. . A ban officially linked to the pandemic: even if in the last month Hong Kong has not registered any cases of local contagion. Tiananmen is a taboo subject in mainland China and Hong Kong (along with Macau) remained one of the few places to publicly commemorate that tragedy.
Hong Kong, Beijing’s electoral reform approved. The government only “to the patriots”
A 37-year-old lawyer and human rights activist, Chow was prepared for that too. “I am ready to be arrested. Hong Kong is like this now. If you fight for democracy under an authoritarian regime, being arrested is inevitable. Let it happen. I am willing to pay the price of the struggle for democracy”, she confided to the BBC a few days ago. does.
The Two Sessions, this is how Beijing plans the future: self-sufficiency and a new squeeze on Hong Kong
by Filippo Santelli
A 20-year-old boy was also arrested with Chow Hang Tung, currently identified only by his surname: Cheung.
Lai, the media tycoon, symbol of the Hong Kong riots, is arrested
by our correspondent FILIPPO SANTELLI
Seven thousand policemen mobilized in the city, about three thousand to guard Victoria Park, the symbolic place of the commemoration. The police, the Hong Kong media reported, started the deployment of agents this afternoon to avoid gatherings.
Hong Kong, thousands commemorate Tiananmen despite the ban
Filippo Santelli
Last month, activist Joshua Wong received a ten-month prison sentence for attending the vigil for Tiananmen last year, when tens of thousands of people decided to challenge the ban and poured into Victoria Park. Next Friday, June 11, another twenty activists will have to appear before the court to answer similar charges.
Beijing’s tough law to stifle Hong Kong
Filippo Santelli
.