www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/international/asia/04CND-HONG.html?hp
Associated Press Holding candles and singing songs, a crowd numbering in the tens of thousands, including some mainland Chinese, gathered in Hong Kong to remember the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings. By contrast, the Beijing square itself was largely quiet under a strengthened police presence.
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Hong Kong Vigil Remembers Tiananmen Square Killings By KEITH BRADSHER Published: June 4, 2004 H ONG KONG, June 4 Holding white candles and singing songs, an unexpectedly large crowd numbering in the tens of thousands gathered here under clear skies tonight to mark the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings. By contrast, the square itself in Beijing was largely quiet on the anniversary. Despite light rain, foreign tourists and some school groups roamed the vast space under the watchful gaze of a noticeably strengthened but not overwhelming police presence.
No organized protest was apparent in China's capital, although at least 16 people were arrested in twos and threes in the square through the day, apparently for making small acts of remembrance. The crowd in Hong Kong, however, clearly included some mainland Chinese, who dress a little differently from local residents and often speak a different dialect. Seeking to revive Hong Kong's economy as a way to tamp down democratic sentiment here, the Chinese government recently began allowing residents of neighboring Guangdong Province, Beijing and Shanghai to visit here on individual visas, instead of with supervised tour groups. The result has been a flood of tourists crowding streets, shops and hotels. In an action certain to anger Beijing further, activists here have distributed flyers to mainland tourists this year for the first time, urging them to attend the candlelight vigil. A neatly dressed mainland man standing at the edge of the vigil said that while he was not expecting quick political change on the mainland, he was nonetheless impressed by the commemoration here of the military crackdown on pro-democracy students in 1989. "Hong Kong should become the foundation for Chinese people to pursue democracy," said the man, who insisted on anonymity. He added that while he might tell his family about the event upon his return to the mainland, he had not decided whether it would be safe to mention it to his neighbors. The annual candlelight vigil here has become the main event by which the military crackdown is remembered. Tonight, a blanket of people covered six soccer fields at the skyscraper-fringed Victoria Park and spilled into surrounding areas, compared with a crowd last year that covered four soccer fields. Organizers estimated the crowd at 82,000 people, up from their estimate of 50,000 in last year's crowd. A police spokeswoman said the crowd peaked at 48,000 an hour and a half into the vigil, although more people may have left earlier or arrived later; the police did not issue an official estimate last year. Tonight's vigil coincided with a deepening split in Hong Kong society, especially over whether freedom of speech is being limited here. Beijing has issued increasingly tough warnings and legal decisions this spring to limit efforts by local residents to achieve greater say in selecting their leaders. Hong Kong, a territory with almost the same population as Switzerland packed into a peninsula and archipelago of small islands with half the land area of Luxembourg, became a special administrative region of China when Britain handed it over in 1997. Three popular radio talk show hosts have quit in the last five weeks, complaining of pressure to limit their pro-democracy views. In the last week, a succession of mainland officials have stepped forward to insist that the hosts had not been intimidated and to suggest that one of the commentators, Allen Lee, had misunderstood a late-night phone call from a former mainland official. Anti-Tung Solidarity, an activist group here that is critical of Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's chief executive, said today that a Hong Kong businessman had been detained for a week in Shenzhen, across the border in mainland China. The businessman had been producing blue umbrellas at his factory in Shenzhen with the Chinese characters for "general elections" on them. After 3,000 umbrellas had been produced and shipped to Hong Kong for use in a pro-democracy demonstration planned here for July 1, the businessman was detained on May 27 and further umbrella production halted, said Stephen Shiu, the convener of the activist group. Mr Shiu said that the man, whom he declined to name, had been released from police detention on Thursday but told that he could not leave Shenzhen pending an investigation into his "political affairs." Shenzhen Public Security Bureau officials could not be reached for comment this evening. Defenders of Beijing's policies are becoming increasingly organized here as well. Daniel Fung, the chairman of the Hong Kong Broadcasting Authority, the regulatory agency for radio and television stations, said that he and a few other prominent lawyers were forming a new group to pursue what he described as China's modernization and better relations between Hong Kong and the mainland. "We need to keep a perspective here China today is more than Tiananmen Square," he said, adding that many of the lawyers in the new group were members of the China People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing. He compared the Tiananmen Square incident 15 years ago, in which possibly hundreds of students were shot to death by soldiers or crushed by tanks, to the fatal shooting of four Vietnam War protesters by edgy national guardsmen in 1970 at Kent State University in Ohio. "Kent State was a major tragedy, but America today is not about Kent State," Mr Fung said. Tonight's vigil seemed to feature a generational split, with older participants focusing mostly on what happened at Tiananmen while younger people tended to give equal weight to events in Beijing on June 4, 1989, and to current democracy struggles here. Ma Hong-kit, a chain-smoking, 73-year-old retired garment factory worker, said that he came because "the Chinese government should come clean about June 4" But Yung Sau-mui, a 37-year-old teacher, said that the turnout increased this year "because of the issues in the last month." Mr Lee, the vice chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movement in China, which organized the vigil, said that Beijing risked radicalizing the youth of Hong Kong by taking such a hard line against democracy here. Young people here increasingly see themselves as citizens of Hong Kong first and China second, he said, adding, "There will be more defiance in the next generation than in our generation, and we don't want to see that."
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