Hong Kong Police Halt Artist’s Tiananmen Memorial Performance on 37th Anniversary
Plainclothes officers searched the artists as Hong Kong authorities kept a close watch on public Tiananmen anniversary commemoration.
- On Wednesday, plainclothes police stopped and searched performance artist Sanmu Chan in Causeway Bay as he displayed a 6.4-metre red string, one day before the 37th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
- Victoria Park once hosted massive annual candlelight vigils to mourn victims of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, but authorities banned these events in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, replacing them with a patriotic food carnival organized by pro-Beijing groups.
- Chan's 6.4-metre string referenced the crackdown date, while police also stopped another artist, Chan Mei-tung, near a department store after she appeared with a question-mark-shaped balloon.
- Police routinely search activists and artists around the anniversary, reflecting shrinking freedom of expression in the city, with Chan noting in Cantonese, "It's abnormal that, whenever we are saying or doing something, we are being monitored."
- Since Beijing imposed the national security law in 2020, public commemoration in Hong Kong has faded, while overseas communities in places like London and Canada now host vigils and rallies to keep memories of the crackdown alive.
25 Articles
25 Articles
Associated Press News
A Hong Kong artist trying to mark the Tiananmen crackdown is quickly stopped by police
A performance artist in Hong Kong has tried to display a red thread to commemorate the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing.
On the eve of the 37th anniversary of the June 4th Incident, police deployed heavy security in Causeway Bay and stationed the Counter Terrorism Response Team for patrols. Performance artist Miki (Chan Sze-sum) attempted to tie a 6.4-meter-long red line to a road sign post on East Point Road this afternoon (June 3rd), and was immediately stopped and searched by several plainclothes police officers. Miki later described the social environment as "…
A performance artist tried to display a thin red thread on Wednesday in central Hong Kong to remind the victims of the Beijing repression in Tiananmen Square in 1989, 37 years after the event. But the police quickly stopped him, in a new hint of the reduction of freedom of expression in the city.
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