They say that last night's candle-lit vigil to mark
the 26th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests and to commemorate its victims, attracted fewer people than last year, as though it was somehow an admission of defeat.
On the ground the event feels more like a victory though, albeit a restrained and dignified one. From Tin Hau MTR station to Victoria Park the area is crammed with people of every demographic profile, patiently proceeding along a narrow route lined with colourful banners, women distributing leaflets,
police officers, volunteers with collection
boxes for the victim's of the crackdown, young men bawling into megaphones, and cheerful T-shirt
vendors. The atmosphere is orderly and restrained but hot, noisy, political and electric too.
I ask the women selling one distinctive yellow T-shirt decorated with black
characters to explain the slogan. Her colleague turns the shirt around to
reveal the English translation; "Uncertain times call for certain
action."
By the time we reach the park, the assembly area
is already full of thousands of people sitting, listening to the organiser's announcements with the soft glow of
their candles piercing the dark night air. It is a moving spectacle and they remain
dignified, defiant and determined as our procession files past into a secondary area on the
Causeway Bay side of the park, where a large video screen conveys the events to
the ever-swelling crowd.
This is the only place in China where a
public event marking the military suppression off the Tiananmen Square student protest
in 1989 would be allowed to happen and it is the first vigil since the Occupy
demonstrations. It is peaceful, well
organised, spontaneous and uncensored in any way. Perhaps it represents all that is
best about Hong Kong and the event must be an annual thorn in the side to those dry apparatchiks of
the Chinese Communist Party looking on from Beijing.
Given that many feared those
idealistic young protesters in their tented settlements in Admiralty and Mon
Kok might suffer the same fate as their counterparts in Beijing 26 years
ago, this year's event is particularly poignant. In such uncertain times, it seems tragic that some of the
younger, more radical localist groups have boycotted the vigil as an irrelevance to Hong Kong affairs
and not of their direct concern.
The unfortunate reality is that freedom of expression and civil liberty in China must be everyone's concern and this event deserves everyone's support, if only as a symbol of the distinctive identity and the essential values of Hong Kong.
