Tiananmen 30th anniversary.

Tiananmen 30th anniversary: Thousands hold huge vigil in Hong Kong

• 36 minutes ago

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• Tiananmen Square protests of 1989

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionHong Kong is one of the few places in China were an annual vigil can be safely held by protestors

Tens of thousands of people have gathered in Hong Kong to mark the 30th anniversary of the crackdown on protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Hong Kong and Macau are the only places in China where people can commemorate the activists killed in 1989.

China has never said how many people died in the crackdown, but hundreds are believed to have been killed.

Organisers say 180,000 people took part in a vigil, centred in the city's Victoria Park.

But police put the number of attendees at less than 40,000. 

Elsewhere in China, the authorities have banned even oblique references to the crackdown, which took place after weeks of mass protests that were tolerated by the government. The numbers gathered in and around the square are estimated to have reached a peak of one million people.

• What were the Tiananmen Square protests about?
• Tiananmen: China's great act of 'forgettance'

Hundreds of security personnel and police were monitoring the square in Beijing on Tuesday. 

Refusing to forget

by Grace Tsoi, BBC World Service, Hong Kong

Image copyrightREUTERS

Hong Kong's Victoria Park is once again a sea of candlelight as far as the eye can see. 

The crowd, many dressed in black, is mostly silent whilst holding up their candles in mourning. Some are crying. In between protest songs, they chant "the people will not forget".

The crowd claps and cheers when Liane Lee - who took part in the 1989 protests - shouts: "We refuse to forget. We refuse to believe the lies".

Standing watching is Teresa Chan. She has attended the commemoration every year since 1990, except once when she was ill.

"I wanted to go Beijing to be with the movement but I couldn't," she says. "I never imagined it would end the way it did, it's very hard to forget."

But there are also new faces in the crowd this year. 

Image captionProtestor Teresa Chan has come to the protest in Hong Kong nearly every year

Ms Leung, who is in her 30s, says she decided to come for the first time because she is worried about Hong Kong's future. 

"I am very angry with what the Chinese government is doing here," she says. 

Amongst the remembrance flowers and candles, there are posters protesting against proposed amendments to laws concerning extraditions to mainland China. Many fear the changes will lead to the further erosion of civil liberties here in Hong Kong.

Here in Victoria Park are also some mainland Chinese residents like Mr Zeng who travelled to Hong Kong with his wife and 11-year-old daughter just to attend tonight's event. 

His daughter says it's an eye-opening experience. "I am here to learn the real history about China. Now I feel like China is no better than other countries," she says. 

Media captionReturning to Tiananmen Square for the first time

The protests in Hong Kong come at a sensitive time for Hong Kong's leadership, with public backlash over a proposed bill that would allow fugitives captured in the city to be extradited to mainland China. 

Smaller vigils are also expected 64km (40 miles) away in Macau's city centre, and on the self-governing island of Taiwan.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionThe protests come at a sensitive time for Hong Kong's leadership

The Tiananmen anniversary earlier prompted a war of words between Washington and Beijing. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticised China's human rights record and called on it to finally reveal how many people died in the crackdown.

In response, a Chinese embassy spokesman in Washington DC said his comments were "an affront to the Chinese people".