One of the people in Hong Kong organizing the annual commemoration of the 1989 student protest in Tiananmen Square in Beijing has been arrested. According to fellow activists, Chow Hang Tung was arrested by police early this morning.
One of them tells Reuters news agency that the authorities want to discourage others from commemorating the banned student protest with her arrest. Today marks 32 years since protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square were brutally dispersed by tanks and gunfire. Estimates of the number of deaths range from a few hundred to many thousands.
In contrast to in China itself commemorating the 1989 events in Hong Kong was allowed. Until last year, when according to the authorities it could not take place because of corona. The commemoration in Hong Kong is also banned this year, officially still because of corona, but the virus is hardly a problem there at the moment. Therefore, it is suspected that China is behind the ban.
candles
Hong Kong authorities are expected to deploy thousands of police officers today to prevent the Beijing student protest from being commemorated. Last year, thousands of people ignored the ban. They lit candles in various places in the city.
Chow Hang Tung, who was arrested this morning, is part of an organization that has set up a museum about the bloody Tiananmen protests in addition to the annual commemoration. That museum was closed this week, officially due to a licensing issue.
Chow previously told international media that she already assumed she would be arrested “at some point” for her activism. In recent weeks, she called on the residents of Hong Kong, despite the ban, to commemorate the student protests in a small circle, by lighting a candle ‘anywhere’.
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