“For the fourth year in a row, Hong Kong’s Victoria Park – historically the site of annual candlelight vigils to remember the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown – will host a patriotic food carnival on June 4. Hong Kong’s Victoria Park on May 29, 2025. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP. The fourth edition of “Hometown Market” will be held from June 3 to 7 at Victoria Park, organisers said during a press conference on Tuesday. The event will feature more than 370 booths selling local Chinese delicacies and showcasing performances by robots, organisers said. Hong Kong’s Victoria Park. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP. Kung Chun-lung, chairperson of the Hong Kong Guangdong Federation, said the carnival will introduce products of “rural rejuvenation,” such as sweet potato, corn, and peanut. The five-day event will also see performances by local celebrities, such as Maria Cordero, as well as a traditional Chinese war dance and a “robotic band,” local media reported . The five-day Hometown Market in Victoria Park in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong poster for the 2026 edition. A section of the event will be dedicated to showcasing the technological innovations of Guangdong province, such as artificial intelligence-powered Chinese medicine consultations, according to organisers’ promotional videos on social media platform. Decades of vigils Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Beijing-imposed national security law, tens of thousands of Hongkongers gathered for an annual candlelight vigil on June 4 to mourn the bloody crackdown on student-led protests around Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Police officers outside Victoria Park, in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, on June 4, 2024, the 35th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP. The number of deaths is not known, but it is believed hundreds, if not thousands, perished during the People’s Liberation Army’s dispersal of protesters, which ended on June 4, 1989. Police banned the Tiananmen vigil gathering at Victoria Park for the first time in 2020 , citing Covid-19 restrictions, and imposed the same ban in 2021, nearly a year after the national security law came into effect. The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which organised the vigils, disbanded in September 2021 after several of its members were arrested . The candlelight vigil held on June 4, 2019, to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Photo: Todd R. Darling/HKFP. No official commemoration has been held since then. Over more recent years, the Hometown Market has taken place with police patrolling the vicinity , stopping and searching passersby. Since the onset of the security law, the Hong Kong government has referred to the Tiananmen anniversary as a “sensitive date,” while statues and artworks paying tribute to the 1989 crackdown have been removed from the city’s university campuses. The Pillar of Shame monument disappeared from the University of Hong Kong in a covert overnight operation on December 23, 2021. The next day, the Goddess of Democracy statue was taken away from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, while the Tiananmen Massacre wall relief was removed from Lingnan University. Chow Hang-tung (right). File Photo: Candice Chau/HKFP. A three-judge panel will deliver a verdict in “mid or late July” following the national security trial of the Tiananmen vigil organisers. Its former leader Chow Hang-tung – along with activists Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho – are charged with inciting subversion. She and Lee pleaded not guilty, while Ho pleaded guilty. They face up to 10 years in prison if convicted. Prosecutors accuse the Alliance of inciting others to topple the ruling Chinese Communist Party through its calls to “end one-party rule” in China, a key tenet of the group since its founding in 1989 after the Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing.
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