Hong Kong has mourned the crushing of the Tiananmen student movement each year since 1989 with a candlelight vigil, but Saturday's commemoration in Victoria Park was one of the biggest in recent years, said Lee Cheuk-yan, chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, one of the organizers christian louboutin heels.
In Beijing, authorities marked the June 4 anniversary by rounding up yet more of their critics, continuing an assault on dissent that activists say is the harshest since the immediate aftermath of the 1989 bloodshed. China also repeated its oft-stated position that the case is closed on the events of 1989. "A clear conclusion has already been made concerning the political turmoil that happened in the late 1980s," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, according to the official Xinhua New Agency. The ministry responded angrily to a call Saturday by the U.S. State Department for "the fullest possible public accounting of those killed, detained or missing" and an end "to the ongoing harassment of those who participated in the demonstrations" in Tiananmen Square. This, said the Chinese spokesman, is "a rude interference in China's internal affairs and its judicial sovereignty." Organizers estimated the crowd at 150,000 or more. Police put the figure at half that, but independent observers said it seemed larger christian louboutin men.
This year's Tiananmen anniversary, which falls less than a month before the Communist Party's 90th birthday and follows weeks of political ferment in authoritarian nations across the Arab world, has been particularly sensitive for China's party.
