Photos: Massive Candlelight Vigil for Human Rights in Hong Kong

Concerns over China draws thousands on Tiananmen Square anniversary

On the 22nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 4, 1989, massive crowds held a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong amid concerns of the deteriorating human rights situation in China.

Local media reports put the number of attendees at 77,000, the Wall Street Journal reports. According to organizers, around 150,000 people attended the gathering at Victoria Park in Hong Kong.

Vendors outside the park sold T-shirts with references to dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who has been detained for more than a month. Just yesterday Wang Jun, an artist who helped organize a festival that included a "cryptic reference" to Ai, was released after being questioned for 10 hours, the New York Times reports. He was given these parting instructions: Keep your name off the Internet, move to another part of town and do not talk to anyone but yourself.

Lee Cheuk-yan, chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, which organizes the vigil each year, told the Journal the current human rights situation in China was the "darkest" in the last 22 years, and that authorities were using upheaval in the Middle East to justify their heavy-handed tactics "outside of the law."