China and Hong Kong reacted to Tuesday's 35th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing with an increased police presence.
Soldiers were posted at important bridges in the Chinese capital on Tuesday. Anyone wishing to enter Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing had to pass through several strict passport and security checks.
In the Chinese Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, which for a long time was the only place in China where the victims of the Tiananmen protests could be commemorated, there were also numerous police officers on the streets.
Public commemorations of the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989 have been prevented in Hong Kong for several years, accompanied by a tougher crackdown by Beijing.
Security officers patrolled the area around Hong Kong's Victoria Park in particular on Tuesday, where a registered candlelight vigil was held every year until 2019.
There had already been several arrests in connection with the anniversary in the run-up to June 4.
On Monday night, the German embassy in Beijing projected flickering candles in several windows of its building as a symbol of remembrance. It published a video of this on its Weibo account, China's version of the social media platform X. It was removed by censors just seven minutes later.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized outside interference on the occasion of the anniversary. "The Chinese government came to a clear conclusion early on about the political unrest that occurred in the late 1980s," said spokeswoman Mao Ning, without going into further detail about the events of June 4, 1989.
