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The June 4 rally in Tsim Sha Tsui. Photo: AFP

Hong Kong localists voice frustrations and call for independence at alternative rally for June 4

While tens of thousands lit candles in Victoria Park on June 4, protesters unhappy with the vigil’s emphasis on mainland democracy rather than Hong Kong joined an alternative rally under the clock tower in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Police put the number of people joining Thursday’s rally, organised by Civic Passion and other localist groups, at 790. Younger faces made up the majority of the crowd, listening to speakers stress that local affairs should be the priority and call for a rethink of the role of Hongkongers in the national democratic movement.

Many speakers and participants had a dim view of the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which organised the Victoria Park vigil to mark the bloody crackdown on the 1989 democracy campaign in Beijing.

“The alliance is behind our time, whether it is the form [of commemoration] or the demands,” said a 22-year-old participant who works in insurance.

“Patriotism has now become a controversial subject and it shouldn’t have been the focus in the first place,” added the protester, who joined the Victoria Park vigil last year. “It’s easier to reach consensus if we focus on, say, holding the culprits for the [Tiananmen] massacre responsible.”

Another rally attendee, who would not give her full name due to the “sensitive” nature of her job, said her main grievance with the alliance was that its leaders refused to pass the torch to the young.

“Just look at who makes speeches on stage, it’s always the same faces after all these years,” said the woman in her 40s, who was also at the alternative event for the first time.

“Independence for Hong Kong!” chanted Ray Wong Toi-Yeung, 22, a key figure in protests against cross-border traders earlier this year, as the crowd joined in.

“The meaning of June 4 is a reminder of the nature of this autocratic regime, that it is a regime which would not hesitate to kill its own people,” lawmaker Wong Yuk-man said of the Beijing leadership. He joined the rally after a bus tour around the city.

He then led chants of “down with the Communist Party” and chanted slogans of opposition to the government’s political reform package.

The rally ended at about 10.45pm, with the burning of cardboard cut-outs of the government’s three senior officials in charge of political reform as a tongue-in-cheek “offering to the Communist Party”.

After the rally, about 300 people, including blue-clad members of the group HK Indigenous, chanted “independence for Hong Kong” as they marched down Canton Road into Haiphong Road and Nathan Road. Police officers observed and monitored along the way and kept people on the pavements.

There were occasional rows with passers-by which resulted in brief disruption to traffic before the march ended at 11.45pm at Jordan MTR station.

 

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