Police patrol at Victoria Park in the Causeway Bay district of Hong Kong on June 4, 2021, after closing the venue where Hong Kong people traditionally gather annually to mourn the victims of China's Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.
In 2019, 180,000 people gathered at the park, last year thousands turned out anyway despite pandemic restrictions. The events of Friday serve as a test for the limits of protest under the security law. Hong Kong government advisor Ronny Tong told ABC that as long as activists don't call for an end to one-party rule, as they have done in the past, there should be no problem hosting vigils in the future."If you're saying, 'I just want to go to Victoria Park to remember June 4th,' and you don't you don't advocate the downfall of any government or the downfall of the Communist Party, I don't see how we could infringe the law," Tong said.
But Hong Kong has undergone a raft of changes since the security law was imposed. Most of the opposition is in jail, repeatedly inundated with legal cases. It's quite frankly hard to imagine how the vigil will ever return in its old form.