Thousands in Hong Kong Mark Anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square Crackdown
In the one small patch of China that nurtures memories the Communist Party wants buried, tens of thousands gathered Saturday night in Hong Kong to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, galvanized in their orderly outrage by China’s current crackdown on dissent, the most sweeping in two decades.
Unlike on the Chinese mainland, where public discussion of the Tiananmen killings is taboo, this former British colony has made remembrance of the military assault on student protesters in Beijing an emblem of both its own freedoms and its Chinese patriotism
“I came to show that what happened won’t be forgotten,” said Dickson Lau, a 26-year-old teacher. “I’m a patriot.”