Commemorate June 4 this year or never, says Jimmy Lai
Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai has called on Hong Kongers to carry on with their plans to take part in the annual vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown after Hong Kong authorities banned the event for the first time since it was first organized 30 years ago.
The founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily said no one should give in to the ban which aims to invoke fear. Otherwise there may no longer be such a commemoration in Hong Kong after the recently passed national security laws come into force.
“If you are able to withstand the fear you should still come out and commemorate [the incident] by going to Victoria Park or by whatever means,” he said.
The annual candlelight vigil held in the downtown park traditionally attracts tens of thousands of participants, making Hong Kong the only Chinese city where a major event is held every anniversary.
On June 4, 1989, Chinese leaders quashed a student-led pro-democracy movement with a military intervention that is believed by some to have killed thousands.
In banning the event, the city’s police force cited the need to maintain social distancing as the city has seen fresh clusters of COVID-19 cases. However, event organizers from the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democracy Movements in China said the ban was a response to Beijing’s plan to tighten its grip on Hong Kong and that the coronavirus outbreak was only an excuse.
“We will not back down,” the Alliance’s Chairman Lee Cheuk-yan said, adding that the group will continue to promote a democractic China as Hong Kongers will not succumb to “rule by fear”.
Lee’s group has called for an end to one-party rule in China and is thought to be at risk of being targeted after the enactment of the Beijing-backed national security laws in Hong Kong.
Lai said: ”There is a knife to our throat...if we are so disgusted by the national security laws and want to resist, we should express our views on June 4.” He added this year’s event might be the city’s last as it’s possible that the national security laws may make any commemoration illegal.
China’s National People’s Congress last month passed a resolution to insert its own version of the national security laws into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law. The laws ban acts of subversion, sedition, terrorism and conspiring with foreign influences in the city but critics fear the law will deal another blow to Hong Kong’s freedoms and will be used to quash dissent.
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