A Hong Kong press group has urged the city’s police to provide an explanation after its former chairperson was led away by officers while she was reporting on the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown.
The move of putting veteran journalist Mak Yin-ting in police custody in Causeway Bay on Sunday without giving any reason amounted to “seriously hindering reporting,” the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) said in a statement issued on Monday.
Mak, ex-chief of the HKJA and freelance reporter for Radio France Internationale (RFI), was stopped by officers on Great George Street at around 6.30 pm. Causeway Bay, a busy commercial district on Hong Kong Island saw heavy police presence on Sunday, as officers thwarted commemorations of Beijing’s military crackdown on student-led demonstrations on June 4, 1989.
According to the HKJA, Mak showed her press credentials to the police and told the officers that she was reporting. She asked the police why she had been stopped and demanded to meet with personnel from the media liaison branch, it said.
The police media liaison team then instructed Mak to go to a tent for a standard search and said she would be released afterwards. The RFI freelancer entered a cordoned area and the police did not conduct a search, but rather put her into a police van, HKJA said.
Mak requested the officers give an explanation and said she did not want to get onto the vehicle. Officers responded by saying she would be arrested for obstructing the police if she did not follow the order.
She was sent to the Wan Chai Police Station and was released at around 11 pm. The police did not press charges.
“We urge the police to respect the work of journalists and not arbitrarily detain them, which seriously hinders their reporting work. We demand that the police explain the incident,” the HKJA statement read.
HKFP has reached out to the police for comment.
Police apprehended a 53 year-old woman on Sunday for allegedly obstructing police officers after she refused to show her identity card outside Victoria Park, where annual candlelit vigils were once held to remember the victims of the Tiananmen crackdown.
Additionally, 11 men and 12 women, aged 20 to 74, were taken from Causeway Bay on Sunday for further investigation on suspicion of breaching the peace, according to the police. They included unionist Leo Tang and chairwoman of pro-democracy group the League of Social Democrats Chan Po-ying.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and the enactment of the Beijing-imposed national security law in 2020, Hong Kong was one of the few places on Chinese soil where memorials to mourn the 1989 crackdown were allowed. The authorities banned the annual vigil for time in 2020 citing social distancing restrictions, and no mass gathering was held over the three years.
Commemorative acts on June 4 this year were muted and scattered in Hong Kong, as top government officials failed to give clear a answer over the legality of the mourning. Small acts of defiance were seen as people showed pictures of a candle on their phones, read books related to the crackdown in public and wore clothes carrying pro-democracy messages .
Large-scale remembrance rallies moved outside of the city, with at least 37 events held across the world, including the UK, Australia, Germany and Japan.
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