Chinese government censors

The cancellation of Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen Square vigil for the first time in 30 years has upset political exiles, the event’s organizers and faithful participants who say the gathering to remember the bloody 1989 crackdown in Beijing risks being permanently scrubbed from the calendar. Honoring lost lives with white flowers, lit candles, evocative songs and speeches has long been part of the annual vigil at the city’s Victoria Park – the only large-scale public gathering on Chinese soil to commemorate the crackdown, a taboo subject in mainland China but not in Hong Kong. Since 1990, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China has held the vigil in remem

July 21, 2019 remains seared into Hongkongers’ memories for the shocking images and videos of white-shirted men, some suspected to be gangsters, beating protesters and train passengers with sticks in the Yuen Long railway station. Over the border in mainland China, the date evokes a memory of a different scenario: black-clad protesters converging on Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong and defacing the national emblem of the People’s Republic of China. Until that day, Chinese media had been silent on protests erupting in Hong Kong. The protests were sparked by a now withdrawn extradition bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent for trial on the mainland, among other jurisdi