Hong Kong | Hundreds march ahead of June 4 anniversary

A protester shouts slogans during a march as hundreds of people protest on a downtown street in Hong Kong

Hundreds of people took to the streets and marched downtown yesterday to mark the 26th anniversary of China’s bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square on June 4, ahead of a much larger annual candlelight vigil.
Organizers said 3,000 people joined the rally, while police put the peak figure at 920, according to local TV station TVB Pearl.
Ralliers marched from Wan Chai to the Central Government Liaison Office calling for the overturn of the June 4th verdict, the release of mainland human rights activists and genuine universal suffrage for Hong Kong.
The South China Morning Post reported that the march’s organizer, the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, said because Beijing was in control of local affairs, including political reform, and was responsible for suppression in China, the new destination was part of a broadening in scope of the annual gathering to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.
According to the newspaper, this year leaders of student unions at several universities decided to skip the vigil in protest at one of the alliance’s slogans: to “build a democratic China”, which in their opinion, amounts to a fruitless fight for the reversal of mainland authorities’ verdict on the incident.
Along the route, marchers were greeted by opposing groups with sporadic confrontations breaking out between the two sides, TVB stated.
Some held yellow umbrellas and tied yellow ribbons to railings, recalling the Umbrella Movement protests that rocked the city last autumn. VM