Hong Kong Arrests 2, Detains 10 Amid Ongoing Crackdown on June 4 Memorials
Udumbara
This year marks the 36th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square Massacre. While public commemorations in Hong Kong have been banned, many citizens continue to honor the event in subtle and varied ways.
In Causeway Bay—once the traditional site of June 4 candlelight vigils—police carried out stop-and-search operations, arresting two individuals and detaining 10 others for further investigation.
Globally, more than 70 commemorative events were held, with particularly strong participation in the UK and Canada—popular destinations for recent Hong Kong emigrants—where members of the diaspora organized numerous memorial activities.
Hong Kong authorities have banned the annual vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. The last such gathering took place in 2019, when the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China received official permission to hold the event in Victoria Park, attracting an estimated 180,000 participants.
In 2020, before the national security law came into effect, police denied approval for the vigil. That year, 26 individuals—including Jimmy Lai, Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, and Joshua Wong—were charged with inciting and participating in an unauthorized assembly. Of those, 21 were sentenced to prison terms ranging from four to 14 months.
Meanwhile, pro-Beijing activities have taken over Victoria Park during the early days of June in recent years. For the third consecutive year, the Federation of Hong Kong Guangdong Community Organisations rented the park to host the “Hometown Carnival Market” from June 1 to 5, featuring 300 stalls. Promotional materials indicated backing from the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau, the Security Bureau, and the Home and Youth Affairs Bureau.
On June 1, social activists, including Koo Sze-yiu, Lui Yuk-lin, and four others, dined at the Golden Shopping Centre in Causeway Bay. As they prepared to leave the restaurant, they were met by a group of police officers waiting outside. Upon exiting the building, the group was surrounded and searched.
While making their way toward Victoria Park, they were closely followed by more than a dozen plainclothes officers. The activists did not enter the football field within the park; instead, they remained briefly on its outskirts before departing via Tin Hau MTR station, still under police surveillance.
On the evening of June 3, customs officers inspected “Heung Together,” a shop operated by former Tsuen Wan district councilor Chan Kim-kam at Dragon Centre in West Kowloon. They accused Chan of violating the Consumer Goods Safety Ordinance and confiscated several items. At the time, the shop was selling candles priced at HK$6.40, believed to be referring to the date of June 4.
Police Arrested 2, Detained 10 Others
On June 4, the Hong Kong police maintained a robust security presence in Causeway Bay, stationing armored vehicles outside Victoria Park and positioning officers atop Lion Rock to ensure heightened vigilance. From the afternoon onward, citizens in and around Victoria Park were subjected to stop-and-search operations and, in some cases, escorted away.Among those stopped were a woman who stood silently at the park’s entrance with her hands clasped and eyes closed for about 90 seconds; a man seated on a bench holding an electronic candle; and a female student in her school uniform holding a white flower.
In the evening, a 24-year-old man wearing a shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Core Values of Socialism” was stopped by police and asked to leave the park. A verbal altercation followed, leading to his arrest for “obstructing a police officer in the due execution of his duty.” Additionally, a 26-year-old woman from mainland China was arrested for “failing to produce identification documents” during a stop-and-search, as she was unable to provide valid ID.
As of 11:30 p.m., Hong Kong police detained 10 individuals in the Central and Eastern Districts of Hong Kong Island for “suspected disturbance of social peace,” with the youngest aged 15 years old.
Citizens Heading to Causeway Bay: ‘Where Righteousness Lies’
.
Despite the heightened police presence, many Hong Kong citizens gathered near Victoria Park to commemorate June 4 in their own quiet, symbolic ways. Cecilia, who requested that only her first name be used, was dressed in a white shirt and black pants and carrying a plastic bag. She told The Epoch Times that her attire was a tribute to the “Tank Man”—the lone protester who bravely stood in front of a column of tanks during the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. She called his spirit one worth emulating.
“Where righteousness lies, you act accordingly,” she said.
U.S. Consulate Lights Candles
On the evening of June 4, the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong and Macau once again lit candles in its windows to commemorate the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. At 8:20 p.m., the Consulate posted a message on its official Facebook page reading, “We remember.”Consulates of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and other countries, along with the European Union Office in Hong Kong and Macau, also took to social media to mark the occasion.
.
June 4 Commemorations Worldwide
In the United Kingdom, Hongkongers in cities such as London, Reading, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Edinburgh held events to mark the anniversary of June 4.In Reading, the group Reading UK Stands with Hong Kong organized a gathering on June 1, which drew over 150 attendees, including nine district councilors, according to organizers. Speakers included scholar Chung Kim-wah and former Central and Western District Councilor Ng Siu-hong.
The event also featured a recorded message from Tsui Hon-kwong, a former standing committee member of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. Tsui had been subjected to a four-and-a-half-month prison sentence for refusing to submit information about the Alliance as demanded by the police under the national security law. In the video, he called on Hongkongers to continue preserving the memory of the massacre.
On June 4, hundreds gathered outside the Chinese Embassy in London to mourn the victims, while also showing support for the imprisoned former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China—Au Nok Tung, Albert Ho, and Lee Cheuk-yan—as well as Jimmy Lai, founder of Next Digital. Urkash Dolat, a prominent Uyghur student leader in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, and Mong Siu-tat, former Secretary-General of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, also attended the event.
On the same day, June 4 commemorative gatherings were held in Manchester and in Birmingham’s Chinatown.
At the Birmingham event, Jonathan Gadsby, a senior lecturer at Birmingham City University, shared his personal reflections, recalling his time living in Sha Tin in 1989. At the age of 13, he watched BBC reporters risk their lives to cover the massacre on television. He remembered teachers weeping in class and citizens wearing black armbands on the Kowloon-Canton Railway.
He said, that summer, his sister wrote “Commemorate June 4 Tiananmen” on a white T-shirt with a pen and wore it across London—going so far as to pose for a photo with the wax figure of Deng Xiaoping at Madame Tussauds. Deng, as then-chairman of the Central Military Commission, played a key role in authorizing the use of military force to suppress the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
.
.
In North America, on June 1, the Toronto Association for Democracy in China held a rally at Mel Lastman Square in North York. According to organizers, around 2,000 people attended, including Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, former Hong Kong Federation of Students Secretary-General Alex Chow, and Tiananmen student leader Zhou Fengsuo.
On the evening of June 3, under the organization of the Joint Headquarters of the China Democracy Party, around 150 Chinese gathered in front of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles to hold a candlelight vigil to commemorate the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square bloodbath.
In Taiwan, on the evening of June 4, the New School for Democracy—a group co-founded by pro-democracy activists from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan—held a commemorative gathering at Liberty Square in Taipei. Speakers included Shen Yu-chung, Deputy Minister of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council; Robert Tsao, a prominent Taiwanese entrepreneur and founder of United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC); Agnes Lin, a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist known for her advocacy on behalf of political prisoners and often referred to as a “prison visitor”; and Tsui Sing-yan, a historian from Hong Kong.
That same evening, former Hong Kong district councilor Lai Man-fai hosted what was dubbed the first June 4 candlelight vigil for Hongkongers in Taiwan at Taipei’s 228 Peace Memorial Park, an event also attended by former Legislative Council member Wong Yuk-man.
.
