After showdown over Tiananmen vigil banned in Hong Kong, both police and residents claim victory – but what happens next?

After authorities banned Victoria Park gathering, residents marking the event blended into the streets and showed their defiance in other ways

Police avoided confrontation and arrested a handful of people, adopting a strategy that could be used in managing such events in the future

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Hongkongers turn on the lights of their mobile phones as a way of marking June 4 after police banned the traditional vigil. Photo: Sam Tsang

Published: 8:00pm, 6 Jun 2021Updated: 10:49pm, 6 Jun 2021

Six hours before 8pm on Friday when Hongkongers would normally have lit candles to remember the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, police swooped in on Victoria Park and threw a tight cordon around it.

Several thousand officers patrolled the grounds and surrounding areas, erected metal barricades and orange tape, and stood on guard in the hot sun. When workers left their offices in the evening, stop-and-search operations at several crowded locations were mounted, targeting those wearing black and carrying backpacks.

As the hour of reckoning approached, a water cannon and two armoured vehicles were spotted making their way from Fanling to Hong Kong Island.

At 8pm, cocking a snook at the massive show of force, Hongkongers across the city promptly lit candles and flashed the lights on their mobile phones.

Police seal off Victoria Park in Causeway Bay to bar public access and prevent unauthorised assemblies on June 4. Photo: Nora Tam

If the authorities’ sole concern was public health, their operation succeeded. The traditional vigil at Victoria Park used to attract tens of thousands. In a city where less than one-fifth of the population has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, an old-style rally could have become a superspreader event. The tough enforcement of the government’s ban on public gatherings ensured that the crowds never materialised.

But if it was also intended to put a stop to Hong Kong’s long run as the only city in the nation with public commemorations of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the police intervention failed. Defiant residents remained determined to memorialise the Chinese killed by security forces in June 1989, when the central government lost patience with the student-led pro-democracy protests in Beijing and other cities.

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