Taiwan will remember the young people who died in the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing more than three decades ago, the self-ruled island’s leader Tsai Ing-wen said.

Hongkongers who had been holding candlelit vigils to commemorate the deaths in the pro-democracy protest would also be kept in people’s minds, Tsai wrote in her Facebook on Friday to mark the 32 anniversary of the June 4, 1989, crackdown.

The Hong Kong government banned the annual vigil for the second year in a row on Friday, sending thousands of police officers to seal off the longstanding venue of Victoria Park in the Causeway Bay area.

“We will not forget the young people who died at Tiananmen Square on this day 32 years ago, and the friends in Hong Kong who have commemorated the victims year after year,” Tsai said. The Taiwanese president has posted messages in remembrance of the crackdown’s victims for years.

“I believe that Taiwanese people who take pride in freedom and democracy will not forget this day and that they will stand even firmer in defending these values,” she said.

Former President Ma Ying-jeou, of the opposition Kuomintang party, urged mainland Chinese authorities to face up to their history and make amends to the families of victims.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party said the crackdown had remained an unhealed wound for mainland Chinese people.

Recent moves by the Chinese Communist Party, such as imposing a national security law on Hong Kong and its breach of the “one country, two systems” principle for governing the former British colony, showed it had been on the wrong side of history, the DPP said.

DPP Deputy Secretary-General Lin Fei-fan said the island would continue to support pro-democracy Hongkongers.

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