Hong Kong holds vigil 30 years after Tiananmen Square

BEIJING (DPA) 04 JUNE 2019Thirty years after a bloody crackdown on students and democracy activists in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, one of modern China’s most defining events was set to go unobserved on Tuesday.

However, outside of the mainland, the massacre is officially remembered in Hong Kong and Macau, two former European colonies that returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 and 1999.

Hong Kong, an autonomous territory, has held a candlelight vigil annually since 1990. This year’s vigil is expected to attract tens of thousands of people.

Richard Tsoi, vice chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Democratic Movements in China, which is organizing the event, said many locals remember watching broadcasts of the protests on television.

Online discussion of the event is also heavily censored in China, including symbolic references to the protests like candles and combinations of numbers relating to the crackdown’s date.