Casey
06-04-2006, 11:55 AM
Hong Kong (dpa) - Tens of thousands of people gathered in Hong Kong Sunday evening for a candlelight vigil to mark the 17th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China.
Organizers said they believed around 40,000 demonstrators joined the vigil in memory of the hundreds of student protestors killed in Beijing in 1989 when tanks and troops crushed a popular uprising.
The turnout at the event, which began at 8 p.m., was massive despite fears of heavy downpours which were expected to reduce the crowd in Hong Kong's Victoria Park.
Several football pitches filled with crowds made up of people of ages, including many families with children too young to remember the world-shaking events of 1989 in Beijing.
The memorial event in Hong Kong is the only one of its kind on Chinese soil commemorating the massacre and has drawn crowds of up to 100,000 in previous years. Last year an estimated 45,000 attended.
Pro-democracy legislator Lee Cheuk-yan said he was "delighted" with the turnout and said it showed how Hong Kong people would not allow the memory of the Tiananmen Square atrocity fade.
The former British colony's Beijing-appointed leader Donald Tsang said Sunday China had changed a lot since the 1989 massacre and had brought Hong Kong many economic benefits.
Speaking in Kunming where he arrived to attend a forum on regional economic development, Tsang said Hong Kong people should make their own objective judgement on the events of June 4, 1989.
Memorials of the 1989 massacre are banned in mainland China but allowed in Hong Kong which has guaranteed political freedoms under the terms of its return to Chinese rule in 1997.
Beijing has never acknowledged any fault over the Tiananmen Square massacre which is says was necessary for the social stability without which China's economic boom would not have been possible.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breakingnews.php?id=101053
Organizers said they believed around 40,000 demonstrators joined the vigil in memory of the hundreds of student protestors killed in Beijing in 1989 when tanks and troops crushed a popular uprising.
The turnout at the event, which began at 8 p.m., was massive despite fears of heavy downpours which were expected to reduce the crowd in Hong Kong's Victoria Park.
Several football pitches filled with crowds made up of people of ages, including many families with children too young to remember the world-shaking events of 1989 in Beijing.
The memorial event in Hong Kong is the only one of its kind on Chinese soil commemorating the massacre and has drawn crowds of up to 100,000 in previous years. Last year an estimated 45,000 attended.
Pro-democracy legislator Lee Cheuk-yan said he was "delighted" with the turnout and said it showed how Hong Kong people would not allow the memory of the Tiananmen Square atrocity fade.
The former British colony's Beijing-appointed leader Donald Tsang said Sunday China had changed a lot since the 1989 massacre and had brought Hong Kong many economic benefits.
Speaking in Kunming where he arrived to attend a forum on regional economic development, Tsang said Hong Kong people should make their own objective judgement on the events of June 4, 1989.
Memorials of the 1989 massacre are banned in mainland China but allowed in Hong Kong which has guaranteed political freedoms under the terms of its return to Chinese rule in 1997.
Beijing has never acknowledged any fault over the Tiananmen Square massacre which is says was necessary for the social stability without which China's economic boom would not have been possible.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breakingnews.php?id=101053