China and Hong Kong responded on Tuesday to the 35th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square protests with an increased police presence.
Soldiers were stationed at key bridges in the Chinese capital on Tuesday. Anyone wanting to enter Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing had to go through several strict passport and security checks.
In the Chinese Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, which for a long time was the only place in China where the victims of the Tiananmen protests could be commemorated, numerous police officers were also on the streets.
Public commemorations of the 1989 Tiananmen Square events have been prevented in Hong Kong for years, accompanied by a tougher crackdown by Beijing.
Security officers patrolled the area around Hong Kong’s Victoria Park on Tuesday, where a registered candlelight vigil was held every year until 2019.
In the run-up to June 4, there had already been several arrests in connection with the anniversary.
On Monday evening, the German embassy in Beijing projected flickering candles in several windows of its building as a symbol of remembrance. It published a video of this on its Weibo account, the Chinese version of the social media platform X. Just seven minutes later, the video was removed by censors.
On the occasion of the anniversary, the Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized outside interference. “The Chinese government came to a clear conclusion early on about the political unrest that took place in the late 1980s,” spokeswoman Mao Ning said, without elaborating on the events of June 4, 1989.
