victoria park. that has all changed with the introduction of the national security law banning vigils. on saturday, scuffles broke out as police tried to arrest those who turned up. they had already been warned that unauthorised assembly could see them imprisoned for up to five years. the threat didn t stop this democracy activist from observing a minute s silence privately indoors. translation: it has become part of our life and it is now how - we practice in our everyday life. as long as we are willing to remember and pass it on, the truth will eventually come to light someday. now taiwan is the only part of the chinese speaking world where it can be remembered openly. activists in taipei put up a new version of the pillar of shame, a statue commemorating tiananmen protesters that was removed from hong kong.
hong kong. it hasn t stamped out dissent, there is still discontent. what it has prevented is large scale mass marches and demonstrations which were an important part of hong kong life as recently as 2019. i was there for the vigil in victoria park on this day in 2019 and there was a massive crowd there and even larger crowds turned out to protest soon after that, but the space for that has been stamped out so that now dissent, as on the mainland, has to often express itself in more indirect ways, more subtle ways through satire, through other things that keep alive a spirit of dissent but not via the kind of mass marches that were part of the local landscape. and how else does the chinese government stop discussion of tiananmen in terms of mainland china? because obviously social media is huge in china but they have ways to stop it there as well? there have been all kinds of forms of censorship but there s been an ongoing cat and mouse game