Democracy activists in prison have called upon Hong Kong residents to remember victims of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown 32 years ago despite an official ban on the annual candlelight vigil.

Hong Kong used to be the host of China’s biggest gathering to mark the June 4, 1989, military clampdown on a student-led democracy movement. Tens of thousands of residents would turn up every year at a memorial held at Victoria Park.

This is the second consecutive year that Hong Kong authorities are banning the vigil, citing social distancing rules related to COVID-19.

The annual event is believed to have been getting under the skin of the central authorities. One of its slogans promotes an end to the one-party dictatorship of China’s Communist Party, a call that some say violates a draconian set of national security laws imposed by Beijing last year.

Several key leaders of the vigil’s organizers, Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, were convicted in the past two months of organizing other pro-democracy protests as the Beijing-backed Hong Kong government continues to make an example of dissidents to deter civil unrest like the chaos that gripped the city in 2019.

One of the jailed alliance leaders, Lee Cheuk-yan, said via his social media platform that residents should “light a candle” as usual to mark the Tiananmen bloodshed although the main event was banned. “Light a candle where it can be seen… to continue to commemorate June 4,” a message on his Facebook page read. Lee, who was being locked up for 20 months in total, said he would light a cigarette inside the prison and go on a one-day hunger strike.

Another alliance leader, Albert Ho, had recorded a video before he was thrown into jail for his role in an unauthorized assembly at the height of the 2019 turmoil. “I have nothing in prison, but I have a candle in my heart, mourning the deaths of June 4 together, for the future of a free China, a democratic China and a free Hong Kong. We believe that democracy will eventually return,” Ho said in the video. He is serving an 18-month sentence.

Police have warned that anyone who attends the banned Victoria Park gathering on Friday may face arrest. Pro-Beijing politicians consider the alliance’s call for democratizing China subversive as it is against the one-party rule.

The alliance’s vice chair, barrister Chow Hang-tung, said she would enter the downtown park as usual, this time as an individual, to mark the bloody crackdown. “Even those in jail are not giving up. Why should we?” she asked.

Pro-democracy district councilors across the city plan to distribute candles to residents on Friday, while religious groups are expected to stage masses in remembrance of those whose blood stained Tiananmen Square in the town center of the Chinese capital Beijing as tanks rolled in during the early hours of June 4, 1989. Some people estimate the casualty toll at several hundred civilians, while others suggest more than 1,000 could have died.

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