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Hong Kong 'Umbrella' protests add poignancy to Tiananmen vigil
A statue of the Goddess of Democracy with a sticker on the forearm, which reads "I want real universal suffrage" is seen before the start of a candlelight vigil at Victoria Park in Hong Kong, China, June 4, 2015. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
By James Pomfret and Clare Baldwin
04/06/2015
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Tens of thousands are due to attend a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong on Thursday to mark China's 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing, an anniversary given added poignancy by protests that gripped the Chinese-run city last year.
The political temperature is rising again in Hong Kong ahead of a June 17 vote on a Beijing-vetted electoral package that democrats says makes a mockery of pledges to eventually grant the city universal suffrage..
China sent in the tanks to break up the student-led protests in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. China has never released a death toll but estimates from human rights groups and witnesses range from several hundred to several thousand.Security was tight on the square on Thursday, with lines at bag checks hundreds of people long. A Reuters reporter saw a middle-aged woman holding a plastic rose hauled away from a checkpoint by authorities.
"Why won't you let me go? Because you are thugs," the woman yelled, before being dragged away by her arms and legs by three police officers.
The square itself was peaceful, with hundreds of tourists stopping to take photos in a slight drizzle.
The killings have been marked each year in Hong Kong, a former British colony which returned to Chinese rule in 1997, and this year's vigil will link the crackdown with last year's Occupy Central protests which blocked Hong Kong streets for months, calling for full democracy.
"Occupy was in a way a mini-June 4 for Hong Kong," said city legislator and vigil organizer Lee Cheuk-yan. "We should not separate our fight for democracy from that of China's. We should link up the two and fight in unity."
But unlike the 1989 crackdown, police disbanded the Hong Kong protest after 79 days without serious violence.
At the Hong Kong vigil this year in the city's harbor-side Victoria Park, images and symbols of Hong Kong's protests will be draped on the stage, T-shirts and posters, Lee said.
A statue of a goddess of democracy, which towered over the Tiananmen protests in 1989, will carry a yellow umbrella - the symbol of defiance in Hong Kong when activists used umbrellas to shield themselves from police pepper spray and tear gas.
Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule under a deal to preserve wide-ranging freedoms, is the only place on Chinese soil where commemorations of June 4 are tolerated. Even discussion of the 1989 protests, termed "counter-revolutionary" by Beijing, is taboo on the mainland.
China has declined to make concessions on its blueprint for Hong Kong's leadership election, under which a 1,200-member committee, packed with Beijing loyalists, will vet two or three candidates who will compete for votes to become the city leader.
In self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of China, organizers of a June 4 vigil will hold up yellow umbrellas in solidarity with Hong Kong.
"We would like to speak out for Hong Kong, for the democracy, freedom and human rights we are fighting for," said organizer Chou Ching-chang.
(Additional reporting by Hong Kong newsroom, and Michael Martina in BEIJING; Editing by Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie)
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