Record turnout expected for Tiananmen vigil in Hong Kong

Jun 4, 2009, 5:20 GMT

   Hong Kong - Organizers of the annual candlelight vigil held in Hong Kong to mark the Chinese government's Tiananmen crackdown have predicted a record turnout for the event Thursday, the 20th anniversary of the 1989 killings.

   Around 100,000 people are expected to gather at Hong Kong's Victoria Park Thursday evening, despite predictions of rain, for the only public commemoration of the massacre on Chinese soil.

   Up to 70,000 people have attended the vigil in previous years and turnouts have always been in the tens of thousands, according to organizers' estimates.

   Last year, organizers said 48,000 people took part, although police put the number at a much lower 16,000.

   Democratic Party legislator Cheung Man-kwong Thursday urged people not to let the rain dampen spirits, reminding them that the first vigil in 1989 had been held when there was a typhoon warning.

   'No matter how heavy the rain, the candles will not go dark. The world is expecting the candlelight to shine in Victoria Park,' he said.

   The highlight of the event will be a one-minute silence to remember the dead, plus speeches by former students who took part in the 1989 protests, including Xiong Yan, who fled to the United States in 1992 and was considered one of the 21 most wanted protest leaders by China.

   Xiong stepped on Chinese soil for the first time in 17 years when he returned to Hong Kong last Saturday.

   However, other students leaders have been refused entry prompting claims that Hong Kong had a blacklist.

   Xiang Xiaoji, one of the student leaders who spoke to government officials in Beijing in 1989 before the protests were crushed, was put on a plane back to the US by immigration officials at Hong Kong International Airport early Wednesday.

   He had previously been allowed into Hong Kong in 1999 to attend a pro-democracy conference.

   Three other Chinese dissidents living in the US have also been refused entry to Hong Kong along with Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot, known for his work on the Tiananmen massacre called The Pillar of Shame.

   The government of Hong Kong has denied it has a blacklist saying it only kept a surveillance list and considered each case individually.

   People in Hong Kong were horrified by the events of June 4, 1989, when troops killed hundreds and possibly thousands of student protestors in the heart of the Chinese capital.

   The massacre had particular poignancy for people in the city of 7 million, then still a British colony but only eight years away from reverting to Chinese rule in 1997.

   Although Hong Kong is now part of China, the annual Tiananmen commemoration is allowed because of Hong Kong's status as a special administrative region where citizens are granted freedom of speech.