Hundreds take part in Hong Kong march marking 1989 Beijing massacre

May 29, 2011, 10:06 GMT

Hong Kong - Hundreds of people joined a pro-democracy march in Hong Kong Sunday to mark the forthcoming 22nd anniversary of China's 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

The annual march in Hong Kong, a former British colony, is the only one on Chinese soil marking the anniversary of the killing of student protesters in Beijing on June 4, 1989.

Organizers, the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, said more people took part in this year's march because of the arrest in April of prominent Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

Ai Weiwei, an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, was arrested in Beijing as he was about to fly to Hong Kong. Chinese officials say he is being investigated over economic crimes.

Sunday's marchers gathered in Hong Kong's Victoria Park and walked to the Central Government Offices, calling on Beijing to release the activists, writers and lawyers detained in China in recent months.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to take part in an annual candlelight vigil in Hong Kong on Saturday, the actual anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 but has a mini-constitution guaranteeing political freedoms and freedoms to protest denied to people elsewhere in China.

Read more about China