Hong Kong police arrested on Friday morning, lawyer Zhao Hang-tun, a leader in the pro-democracy movement, hours before the anniversary of the Tiananmen events, which authorities prevented from reviving for the second year in a row.

An AFP journalist reported that four people in civilian clothes were waiting for the lawyer in the city center in front of the building where her office is located. When she arrived, they identified themselves as police officers and told her that they would arrest her.

Then the police escorted the 37-year-old woman to a black car and drove her away.

A police source told AFP that the lawyer was arrested under Section 17-A of the Public Order Law.

Zhao He is one of the vice-chairmen of the “Hong Kong Alliance”, the movement that organizes on the 4th of June every year in “Victoria Park” a candlelight evening with a huge crowd of people in remembrance of the victims who fell in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4, 1989 When the Chinese regime crushed with tanks and soldiers student demonstrations that were calling for democracy.

For the second year in a row, the Hong Kong authorities banned this evening, citing restrictions imposed to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, although the city has not recorded any new local infection in more than a month.

In compliance with the authorities’ decision, the “Hong Kong Alliance” announced that it would not organize the evening candlelight, but Zhao told reporters that she plans to go alone to Victoria Park on Friday evening in her personal capacity.

Last year, the authorities banned the commemoration of this anniversary due to the pandemic, but tens of thousands of people defied the ban and participated in the evening candles, which brought back 24 lawsuits against the symbols of the pro-democracy movement.

Hong Kong has been commemorating Beijing’s bloody crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square with candlelight rallies. The number of participants in these gatherings has increased in recent years at a time when the anger of a large segment of the population escalated from the growing influence of Beijing on their city.

On June 4, 1989, the communist regime sent tanks and soldiers to crush student demonstrations that lasted for weeks. Various estimates of the number of victims of that massacre range from hundreds to thousands of dead.