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 The political temperature is rising again in Hong Kong ahead of a
June 17 vote on a Beijing-vetted electoral package that democrats
says makes a mockery of pledges to eventually grant the city
universal suffrage..
China sent in the tanks to break up the student-led protests in and
around Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. China has never
released a death toll but estimates from human rights groups and
witnesses range from several hundred to several thousand.Security
was tight on the square on Thursday, with lines at bag checks
hundreds of people long. A Reuters reporter saw a middle-aged woman
holding a plastic rose hauled away from a checkpoint by authorities.
"Why won't you let me go? Because you are thugs," the woman yelled,
before being dragged away by her arms and legs by three police
officers.
The square itself was peaceful, with hundreds of tourists stopping
to take photos in a slight drizzle.
 The killings have been marked each year in Hong Kong, a former
British colony which returned to Chinese rule in 1997, and this
year's vigil will link the crackdown with last year's Occupy Central
protests which blocked Hong Kong streets for months, calling for
full democracy.
"Occupy was in a way a mini-June 4 for Hong Kong," said city
legislator and vigil organizer Lee Cheuk-yan. "We should not
separate our fight for democracy from that of China's. We should
link up the two and fight in unity."
But unlike the 1989 crackdown, police disbanded the Hong Kong
protest after 79 days without serious violence.
At the Hong Kong vigil this year in the city's harbor-side Victoria
Park, images and symbols of Hong Kong's protests will be draped on
the stage, T-shirts and posters, Lee said.
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A statue of a goddess of democracy, which towered over the Tiananmen
protests in 1989, will carry a yellow umbrella - the symbol of
defiance in Hong Kong when activists used umbrellas to shield
themselves from police pepper spray and tear gas.
Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule under a deal to preserve
wide-ranging freedoms, is the only place on Chinese soil where
commemorations of June 4 are tolerated. Even discussion of the 1989
protests, termed "counter-revolutionary" by Beijing, is taboo on the
mainland.
China has declined to make concessions on its blueprint for Hong
Kong's leadership election, under which a 1,200-member committee,
packed with Beijing loyalists, will vet two or three candidates who
will compete for votes to become the city leader.
In self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of China,
organizers of a June 4 vigil will hold up yellow umbrellas in
solidarity with Hong Kong.
"We would like to speak out for Hong Kong, for the democracy,
freedom and human rights we are fighting for," said organizer Chou
Ching-chang.
(Additional reporting by Hong Kong newsroom, and Michael Martina in
BEIJING; Editing by Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie)
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