Hong Kong police have arrested at least two artists and two other people in the middle of the street, on the eve of the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen movement. As the event approached, authorities repeatedly refused to confirm whether its public commemoration was illegal.
Hong Kong police have arrested at least two artists and two other people in the middle of the street, on the eve of the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen movement. On a street in the bustling Causeway Bay district, artist Sanmu Chen sang “Remember June 4th! People of Hong Kong, don’t be afraid of them!” on a loop.
A policeman shouted at him “to stop speaking seditious words”. The man was then loaded into a police van, noted an AFP journalist. Another performance artist, Chan Mei-Tung, was also taken away. The police also arrested a young couple who were holding white chrysanthemums, a symbol of mourning.
Artists, forced to perform outside the Chinese metropolis
When AFP asked him if they were under arrest, the man replied: “I have no idea”, before being taken away. For more than 30 years, tens of thousands of people have gathered each year in Victoria Park for a candlelight vigil in memory of the more than 1,000 peaceful demonstrators who fell under the bullets of repression on June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
But since Beijing imposed a national security law on Hong Kong in 2020, the authorities have put an end to these gatherings and pushed the artists involved in these commemorations to produce their shows outside the Chinese metropolis. As this year’s anniversary approached, authorities repeatedly refused to confirm whether public commemoration of the event was illegal, saying only that “everyone should act according to the law”.