Hong Kong’s skyline towers over the empty soccer pitches of Victoria Park, where tens of thousands of residents have gathered annually to commemorate the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown against a pro-democracy movement on June 4, 1989. But this year city police partially closed access to the downtown park and banned the commemoration for the second consecutive year, citing pandemic concerns. This is widely seen as a move by authorities to rein in freedom of speech in the city, after Beijing imposed a sweeping set of national security laws last year and arrested prominent pro-democracy leaders.

On this year’s anniversary of the bloodshed, an event organizer was arrested for publicizing the annual ritual. Pockets of protests on Friday dotted other parts of the city, however, as residents mourned those killed during the tragedy and called for an end to one-party rule by the Chinese Communist Party. Estimates of the death toll during the military crackdown range from a few hundred to over 1,000.

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