For many local Catholics, the annual commemoration to recall the bloody crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989 begins with a prayer vigil at a bandstand kiosk hundreds of metres away from the main event site at Victoria Park The gathering has attracted 800 to 1,000 of the faithful in recent years. 
 

HONG KONG (SE): Around 900 people came together for a prayer service on the evening of June 4 at the music kiosk of Victoria Park to remember of the victims in the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing nearly three decades ago and to pray for a peaceful vindication.
 
Joseph Cardinal Zen Ze-kiun, the former bishop of Hong Kong, said people gathered not only to mourn the martyrs killed 29 years ago, but also to pray for those whose religious freedom is being suppressed in China at present. 
 

HONG KONG (SE): “We must wake up and identify ourselves as Chinese people,” the former bishop of Hong Kong, Joseph Cardinal Zen Ze-Kiun, told around 300 people gathered to pray at Victoria Park on the anniversary of those who died  at Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989.

He said that the matter is far from being resolved, as to date no responsibility on the part of the government has been admitted and there has never been an apology.