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Hong Kong activists clean Pillar of Shame in first Tiananmen commemoration event since national security law imposed
- Ritual of washing sculpture located on University of Hong Kong campus is the first in annual series of events to mark June 4
- Small group of activists also observed minute’s silence to mourn those killed in 1989 crackdown
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Opposition activists on Sunday held their annual ritual of washing the Pillar of Shame, a sculpture at the University of Hong Kong that commemorates the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing.
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It marked the start of a series of annual events as Hong Kong remembers June 4 for the first time since the central government imposed a national security law on the city last year.
Sunday’s event was organised by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, a group mainland Chinese academics have labelled subversive because of its calls for an end to “one-party rule”.
As alliance head Lee Cheuk-yan was jailed for 14 months in April over his role in two illegal protests during anti-government demonstrations in 2019, vice-chairman Albert Ho Chun-yan, who received a one-year suspended sentence in the same case, took the lead.
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Several core alliance members shouted slogans, calling for the “end of one-party dictatorship” and “reverse the June 4 verdict” that the Tiananmen protests were counter-revolutionary.
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