Lights out in Victoria Park, lights on everywhere else

This was the first June 4 since the National Security Law came into effect last July.

This is the second time the Hong Kong Police refused a permit for the candlelight vigil event in Victoria Park.

Let’s look back at what happened only twelve months ago.

The application for a candlelight vigil at Victoria Park was denied, for the very first time after 30 years. The reason was simply no public assembly should be taken place during the COVID pandemic. The authority staff sealed off the park area in the early afternoon. People still arrived in the early evening, a few people broke off the blockade a little bit and people entered the soccer fields area. They kept a social distance between themselves and carried out their own mourning. It was a quiet and solemn evening, there were no staged program, no singing, and no story-telling session. Just people paying respects to the lost souls during the Tiananmen Square Massacre back in 1989.

There were an estimated about 20,000 people inside Victoria Park that evening, it was peaceful and no incidences at all. However, 24 people were arrested later to face charges of inciting others to attend an unlawful assembly. This was probably the first batch of activists being arrested after the new National Security Law introduced on July 1st, 2020. Since then, massive arrests were made in waves, and many of them were arrested more than once or twice. Some were even denied bail, and being locked up before a trial.

I guess people lost count with so many different arrests and charges were made in the last 10 months. So let’s focus on the June 4th incident from last year. The first sentence was handed out on May 10th, 2021. Joshua Wong, Lester Shum, Jannell Leung, and Tiffany Yuen all pleaded guilty and received jail terms for between four and six months. Wong got ten months because he is a repeat offender. The rest of the group will be in court next week, June 10, and jail time is almost inevitable.

So base on this, the HK government is more determined to snuff out all candlelights this year. They use the same reason to refuse the assembly, and since most of the leaders are already behind bars, they would have thought this is an easy job. They even arrested Chow Hang-tung, one of this year’s organizers since the others are in jail or in exile, early in the morning. Little did they know, one can put out a fire, but never the spirit.

Their plans included totally shutting down the Victoria Park soccer fields area, with barricades in the early afternoon; mobilizing 7,000 policemen to patrol the usual hotspots; shutting down lanes in all three cross-harbour tunnels to discourage people travel from Kowloon side to the island side. It seemed the more they do, it drew more people to act.

There were churches that held a special mass for the victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre all over the city. Even though the attendance was limited because of 599G, people still scattered outside the buildings and watch the sermon through their phones. The police kept a close eye on them, and even tried to disperse from time to time. People moved around, yet some brave souls would argue with the police and received a harsh warning. Some even got searched and personal information recorded.

In the usual hotspots like Causeway Bay near Sogo, or in Mong Kok, people walked around with a candle in hand. Some simply turned on their phone to show a picture of a candle, otherwise, they just keep the flashlight on all the time. As more people showed up, they even started to shout slogans as if in the demonstration just two years ago. The police had little they can do but were busy showing warning flags to the crowd. Purple flags after the blue flags, then the green flags. They managed to blow out some candles left behind by the crowd in between.

If they allowed the assembly to continue in Victoria Park like before, they probably need only 700 staff, or even less, to make sure things go smoothly. Now they used 10 times the manpower, and surely there was not one candlelight in Victoria Park, but it certainly spilled over to all over the city. The images of people doing everything in their own will to pay respect to the victims spoke so much louder. It also drew more attention from the media, local and foreign. Even Pet Shop Boys post one single photo that spoke volumes and spread around the world. Obviously, they got the opposite of what they set out to do.

As the saying goes, “lift up a stone and smashed one’s own foot”, or in plain English, “Shoot yourself in the foot”. They just precisely demonstrated that.

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