A performance artist on Wednesday sought to display a thin red thread in downtown Hong Kong to remember the victims of Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, 37 years on from the event. But he was quickly stopped by police, in the latest sign of the city’s shrinking freedom of expression.
Sanmu Chen tried to tie the red thread to a street signpost in Causeway Bay, a busy shopping district, close to a park that for decades hosted an annual candlelight vigil on June 4 to mourn the victims of the crackdown that ended student-led protests in Beijing in 1989.
Hong Kong was for decades the only place in China where a large-scale public commemoration of the crackdown was held. But those once-massive annual vigils were banned in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and public acts to mark the Tiananmen Square killings have become increasingly sensitive in the city in recent years.
Chen said his thread was 6.4 meters long, an apparent reference to the June 4 crackdown date.
Police officers stopped and searched Chen’s bag before letting him go free. When asked by a reporter about his gesture with the red thread after his release, Chen said it was meant to express condolences to those who died.
“It’s abnormal when people monitor you when you are saying or doing something,” he told reporters.
Chen had been detained at least twice on Jun. 3 in recent years. In 2024, he was briefly detained by police after he appeared to write the Chinese characters of “eight nine six four” — a set of numbers referencing the date of the crackdown — with his hand in the air.
Police also detained Chen on the same day in 2023 around the same area, where he chanted “Hong Kongers, do not be afraid. Don’t forget tomorrow is June 4.”
As night fell, another artist, Chan Mei-tung, stood outside a nearby department store holding up a question-mark-shaped balloon. Police officers also stopped her quickly and escorted her back to the subway station.
Under then-leader Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese military was sent to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to end weeks of student-led protests on the night of June 3-4, 1989. Soldiers fired live rounds and hundreds and possibly thousands of people were killed, including dozens of soldiers.
Annual vigils in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park used to attract tens of thousands of people each year until the event was banned in 2020 during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic.
That was the same year Beijing imposed a national security law in the city following massive anti-government protests in 2019. Since then authorities have increasingly silenced dissent. Many leading activists were arrested and some vocal media outlets shut down. Dozens of civil society groups disbanded, including the one that organized the vigils.
Three former vigil organizers were charged in 2021 with inciting subversion under the national security law. Two of the former organizers went on trial and are waiting a verdict, possibly in July. If convicted, they face a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Their co-defendant entered a guilty plea, which can typically result in a sentence reduction.
The Hong Kong and Beijing governments said the security law is crucial for the city’s stability. Hong Kong authorities said the law clearly stipulates that human rights shall be respected and protected in safeguarding national security.
After COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, the former vigil site was occupied instead by a carnival organized by pro-China groups. Some people who tried to commemorate the event near the site on Jun. 4, the crackdown’s anniversary, were detained.
The five-day carnival began Wednesday. The muted expressions in Hong Kong underlined the decline in civil liberties promised by Beijing when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
As public commemoration faded in Hong Kong, overseas communities were carrying the torch to keep memories alive by hosting vigils and rallies in places like London and Canada.
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Associated Press video journalist Alice Fung contributed to the report.