Hong Kong’s Victoria Park is empty on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre

On June 4, 1989, the world watched in disbelief, as the violence unfolded in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

For the three decades-plus since, Hong Kong residents have gathered in Victoria Park to mark the sad anniversary.

Not this year, though. A tweet from Agence France-Presse’s Hong Kong-Taiwan-Macau bureau chief, Jerome Taylor, contrasts a photo taken this year with anniversary vigils in 1990, 1999, 2004, 2011, 2015, 2018, 2019, and 2020. The picture from 2021 shows a vast open, unpopulated space, while those taken in previous years have huge crowds. One exception is 2020’s memorial, which is sparser.

Powerful combo picture has just hit the @AFP wire.

Shows Tiananmen anniversary vigils in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park in 1990, 1999, 2004, 2011, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020 and… tonight pic.twitter.com/Gf3Fpwtmdt

— Jerome Taylor (@JeromeTaylor) June 4, 2021

Hong Kong-based journalist Ezra Cheung tweeted pictures by photographer Chung Kin Wa—a woman kneeling and holding a white flower and a man bent over to write.

“Although Hong Kong police have banned the once-yearly commemoration of the Tiananmen Square crackdown the second straight year, pre-empting increased police presence, it apparently doesn’t deter people from mourning for the event,” Cheung wrote.

Last year, Zoom apologized for interrupting online Tiananmen Square vigils at the urging of the Chinese government.

At the time of the Tiananmen massacre, Hong Kong belonged to Great Britain, but the former empire handed the city over to China in 1997. It is considered a special administrative region.