Hong Kong police have said they arrested two people and took away 10 others on Wednesday, the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown – the youngest being a 15-year-old.
In Wan Chai and Eastern District, five men and five women aged between 15 and 69 were taken to police stations for investigation on suspicion of breaching the peace, police said in an emailed statement shortly after midnight on Thursday.
Another two people were arrested in Central and Causeway Bay after they were found “behaving suspiciously,” the force also said.
See also: Hong Kong police deploy armoured vehicle in Causeway Bay on Tiananmen crackdown anniversary
HKFP saw several people being taken away on police vans on Wednesday evening, including activist Lui Yuk-lin and performance artist Chan Mei-tung in Causeway Bay, near Victoria Park, the venue where Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen vigils were once held.
In the park, a man holding an electric candle, a man standing silently in the rain, and two women, including a girl holding flowers and dressed in a school uniform, were also taken into police vehicles.
Pro-democracy activists intercepted
Members of the pro-democracy League of Social Democrats (LSD) were intercepted on their way to Causeway Bay, according to the party’s social media posts.
The LSD said that its chair, Chan Po-ying, brought yellow paper flowers to mourn the victims of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on Wednesday.
She was surrounded by more than 20 plainclothes officers when she got off the bus at the Sogo department store at around 7pm. When asked to surrender the flowers, she refused to do so. Chan was taken to Wan Chai Police Station in a police vehicle and released at around 9pm.
Yu Wai-pan, internal vice-chair of the LSD, was also intercepted at East Point Road on his way to Victoria Park. He was taken to the same police station and released at 11pm.
Hundreds of police officers – both in uniform and plainclothes – were deployed in Causeway Bay on Wednesday evening, stationed in the MTR station, outside the Sogo department store, as well as in and around Victoria Park.
According to the police statement, three of the 10 people taken away were detained for investigation, while the remaining seven were allowed to leave.
One of the two people arrested was a 26-year-old mainland Chinese woman who allegedly failed to produce proof of identity on Garden Road in Central.
She was taken to the police station for further investigation and subsequently allowed to leave.
The other was a 24-year-old local man whom police approached near Hing Fat Street in Causeway Bay in the evening.
The man was “emotionally agitated and refused to cooperate,” the police statement said. “He was arrested on suspicion of ‘obstructing police officers in the performance of their duties’ and is currently being detained for investigation.”
Authorities banned the Tiananmen vigil gathering at Victoria Park for the first time in 2020, citing Covid-19 restrictions, and imposed the ban again in 2021, nearly a year after a national security law imposed by Beijing came into effect.
The vigil organiser – the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China – voted a year later to disband after its former leaders Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, and Chow Hang-tung were charged with incitement to subversion under the national security law.
