Hong Kong police took away seven people in Causeway Bay, where past public commemorations for China’s 1989 Tiananmen crackdown were once held, on Thursday, the 37th anniversary of the event.
Police said late on Thursday that five men and two women, aged 17 to 79, were stopped by officers on suspicion of “disrupting order” near Great George Street and East Point Road in Causeway Bay.
They were taken away from the scene for further investigation and were released later, according to police.
“The police force will act according to threats to national security, public safety, and public order,” they added.
Activists and members of the public defied a heavy police deployment at and around Victoria Park, the former site of the city’s annual Tiananmen vigils, as they showed up in Causeway Bay on Thursday to mark the 1989 crackdown.
In Pictures: Activists stopped near ex-vigil site amid large police deployment on Tiananmen crackdown anniversary
Chan Po-ying, chairperson of the now-defunct League of Social Democrats, a pro-democracy party, arrived in Causeway Bay holding a yellow paper flower. She was quickly told by police at the scene to put away the flower and was later taken away in a police vehicle.
A young man in a black T-shirt was intercepted by police after he put on a blindfold and used a red marker pen to write on his arm outside the Sogo department store at around 7.15pm.
The man was driven away in a police van. He was also taken away from Victoria Park by law enforcement during the Tiananmen crackdown anniversaries over the past two years.
HKFP saw two other men taken away in a police van: a man holding a candle and another man sitting cross-legged on the ground outside the Sogo department store.
Police also took away a woman gesturing “six” and “four” with her hands, local media reported.
For the fourth consecutive year, on the day of the crackdown anniversary, a patriotic food carnival was being held in Victoria Park, at the same spot where hundreds of thousands of people attended the Tiananmen vigils. The carnival will run until Sunday.
Some people walked around the park to remember the crackdown and the past vigils. A 70-year-old man surnamed Tin told HKFP it was a “pity” that Hong Kong has lost its tolerance for public commemoration on June 4 – the date of the 1989 crackdown.
Compared with previous years, police officers appeared more relaxed on Thursday, patrolling the park and its vicinity in smaller groups and conducting fewer searches than before.
The Tiananmen crackdown occurred on June 4, 1989, ending months of student-led demonstrations in China. It is estimated that hundreds, perhaps thousands, died when the People’s Liberation Army cracked down on protesters in Beijing.
Leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, the group that organised the vigils for decades, are standing trial for “inciting subversion” under the national security law. They face up to 10 years behind bars if convicted.
A verdict is expected in July.
