Patriotic carnival to return to Hong Kong's Victoria Park on anniversary of Tiananmen crackdown
For the third consecutive year, Hong Kong's Victoria Park – historically the site of annual candlelight vigils to remember the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown – will host a patriotic food carnival on June 4.
The Hometown Market will be held from Sunday, June 1, to June 5, featuring nearly 300 booths, according to the organisers' Facebook page.
During the five-day event, 30 clan associations representing provinces such as Guangdong, Fujian, and Guangxi will run booths selling local delicacies.
There will also be 'innovative technology and sports experience zones,' the pro-Beijing organisers also said.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Beijing-imposed national security law, tens of thousands of Hongkongers gathered for an annual candlelight vigil on June 4 to mourn the bloody crackdown on student-led protests at Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
The number of deaths is not known, but it is believed hundreds, if not thousands, perished during the People's Liberation Army's dispersal of protesters, which ended on June 4, 1989.
Police banned the Tiananmen vigil gathering at Victoria Park for the first time in 2020, citing Covid-19 restrictions, and imposed the same ban in 2021, nearly a year after the national security law came into effect.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which organised the vigils, disbanded in September 2021 after several of its members were arrested.
No official commemoration has been held since then.
The park also played host to the Hometown Market last year and the year before, with police patrolling the vicinity, stopping and searching passersby.
In recent years, the Hong Kong government has referred to the Tiananmen anniversary as a 'sensitive date,' while statues and artworks paying tribute to the 1989 crackdown have been removed from the city's university campuses.
The Pillar of Shame monument disappeared from the University of Hong Kong in a covert overnight operation on December 23, 2021. The next day, the Goddess of Democracy statue was taken away from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, while the Tiananmen Massacre wall relief was removed from Lingnan University.
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