(4 Jun 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hong Kong – 4 June 2025
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Raf Wober, The Associated Press:
"June the fourth in Hong Kong is now a strange day. It used to be a big event, remembering what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989 in Beijing. Now, here, at Victoria Park, instead of the people gathering, there are lots of police standing around, and inside the park, there is a small, like, trade fair, people selling food and things from around China. It’s taken over the venue where the organisers of the Tiananmen memorial used to hold their event on June the fourth. And if we look back here, towards the shopping district of Causeway Bay, there used to be thousands and thousands of people coming out in the evening, to take part in this candlelight vigil. But nowadays, that’s not possible. It hasn’t been possible, or properly allowed, since 2019. So, it’s a big change, Hong Kong before 2019, and Hong Kong now, the remembrance, the history of Tiananmen, has totally changed."
2. Various of Victoria Park where people used to gather for vigil but now hosting a fair offering food and other products from mainland China, police patrolling
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Hong Kong – 4 June 2019
++NIGHT SHOTS++
3. Various of candle light vigil gathering at Victoria Park
STORYLINE:
For most Chinese, the 36th anniversary of a bloody crackdown that ended pro-democracy protests in China passed like any other weekday. And that’s just how the ruling Communist Party wants it.
In Hong Kong, a carnival showcasing Chinese food and products was held in Victoria Park, where tens of thousands of people used to gather in the evening for a candlelight vigil to mark the anniversary of weeks of student-led protests at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square which shook the party in 1989.
Hong Kong authorities first shut down the vigil during the COVID-19 pandemic and arrested the organizers in 2021.
The moves were part of a broader crackdown on dissent following monthslong anti-government protests in 2019 that turned violent and paralyzed parts of the city.
Police were out in force to try to prevent any protest. Activist Lui Yuk-lin was stopped at a subway station in Causeway Bay and brought to a police van. It wasn’t clear if she had been arrested.
Jailed vigil organizer Chow Hang-tung said she would go on a 36-hour hunger strike to remember the events of the day.
The British and Canadian consulates posted social media messages about not forgetting June 4. Hong Kong was a British colony until 1997.
The American consulate posted a message from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on its website. “The CCP actively tries to censor the facts,” Rubio said, referring to China’s Communist Party. "But the world will never forget.”
Under then-leader Deng Xiaoping, the military was sent in to end the protest on the night of June 3-4 1989.
Using live ammunition, soldiers forced their way through crowds on the streets that tried to block them from reaching the square.
Hundreds and possibly thousands of people were killed, including dozens of soldiers.
The party has tried, with some success, to erase what it calls the “political turmoil” of 1989 from the collective memory.
It bans any public commemoration or mention of the June 4th crackdown, scrubbing references from the internet.
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