June 4th is the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Despite this significant day, Hong Kong has not held the traditional Victoria Park candlelight vigil for the sixth consecutive year. Instead, the annual vigil has been replaced by increasingly grand scale local market fairs. On this day, there were patrols by police officers in the Causeway Bay area, and the anti-terrorism special task force was also mobilized.
In the early hours of June 4, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party’s military brutally suppressed the university students and citizens at Tiananmen Square who were calling for democracy, human rights, and opposing rampant corruption, resulting in a large number of casualties. This event is known as the “June 4th Tiananmen Incident”. Since then, every year when June 4th arrives, people around the world who strive for freedom engage in various forms of commemorative activities to remember the victims of that year and call for an end to the CCP’s brutal rule.
Hong Kong has always been a stronghold for commemorating June 4th and supporting democracy in China. Since the Tiananmen incident, Hong Kong residents have supported the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China (commonly known as the Alliance) which holds a candlelight vigil every June 4th evening in Victoria Park in Causeway Bay. The gathering used to be the largest annual event commemorating June 4th in the world, attracting tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of participants regardless of weather conditions.
However, after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of 2019, the Hong Kong government, citing epidemic prevention measures, prohibited the gathering for the first time in 2020. However, on that day, over ten thousand people defied the ban to attend the vigil. In the same year, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of the CCP passed the “Hong Kong National Security Law”, which was implemented directly in Hong Kong bypassing local legislative procedures, making public commemorations of June 4th taboo. Additionally, the Alliance was forced to disband in 2021, further diminishing the prospect of large-scale June 4th vigils in Victoria Park. Hong Kong residents are now left to privately mourn or commemorate in discreet ways.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the “Hometown Market Carnival” organized by local associations has replaced the traditional June 4th candlelight vigil. This year marks the third consecutive year of the event in Victoria Park, and it is the largest in scale over the past three years, running from June 1st to the 5th.
On the occasion of the 36th anniversary of June 4th, we have put together some unforgettable moments from past grand candlelight vigils held in Victoria Park.