Police have banned Hong Kong’s June 4 vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown for the second straight year, citing Covid-19 restrictions, the Post has learned.
The force told organisers on Thursday it had blocked the Victoria Park event based on social-distancing rules in place for the pandemic, which outlaw the gathering of more than four people in public.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China planned to hold a march on Sunday and a vigil on Friday next week in memory of the crackdown, but sources said both events had been banned.
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Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen Square vigil banned on Covid-19 grounds
This year’s event was scheduled to be the first since Beijing imposed a national security law on the city in late June last year, which bans acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.
The mass gathering in Causeway Bay has been the only large-scale commemoration of the crackdown on Chinese soil.
Last month, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department pointed to the Covid-19 pandemic when it said the alliance’s application for the use of Victoria Park on June 4 would not be processed.
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