Tang Ngok-kwan (鄧岳君) occasionally visits the places where Hong Kongers once publicly remembered Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.Although Tang’s fellow activists were locked up in prison, accused of inciting subversion, and an annual candlelight vigil they previously organized to mourn the crackdown’s victims vanished, the 58-year-old continues to personally and discreetly remember the event, which is a political taboo on mainland China.At Victoria Park, where tens of thousands of people once gathered for the only large-scale public commemoration of the bloody military crackdown in China, Tang bowed on the eve of the anniversary and read off a list of the victims in a low voice. He sometimes returns to two university campuses where commemorative sculptures once stood, even though most traces of their existence already have vanished.
Democracy activist Tang Ngok-kwan poses for a photograph in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park on July 11.
Two of Tang’s former colleagues were convicted on Friday under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law, facing a maximum prison term of 10 years. Their vigil organizing group also was found guilty. Government-approved judges ruled the pair had incited others to overthrow the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party through unlawful means.Many observers say the convictions were the latest case reflecting the decline in freedoms in the former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
