June 4 vigil becomes a fight for democracy

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) – More than 80 thousand people rallied yesterday in Victoria Park on the 15th anniversary of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown. Hong Kong people hold a candlelight vigil every year to commemorate China's military crackdown on unarmed students rallying for democracy in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, and this year's event was highly charged after China recently ruled out full democracy in the near term for Hong Kong.

"Their fight for democracy back then is the same fight as ours," opposition lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan said. Relationship between the democratic movement in Hong Kong and activists in the mainland has become stronger in these years, bringing up Beijing worries about stability in mainland.

In a letter to the Hong Kong public read out at the vigil, Ding Zilin, a core member of the Tiananmen Mothers advocacy group in Beijing, said she was very concerned with the rolling back of freedom and democracy in Hong Kong. In a recorded speech, Wang Dan, the former Tiananmen student leader who lives in exile in the US, said Hong Kong had increasingly become the "conscience of China" in the pro-democracy movement.

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