Hong Kong marks 1989 Beijing massacre

Hong Kong marks 1989 Beijing massacre

"March for democracy in China," their banner read, while some carried photographs of those killed in the crackdown.

"Release political prisoners," the protesters shouted as they marched to the government headquarters.

A number of democracy activists and journalists gave their accounts of the massacre on June 4, 1989, when hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed when China's Communist leaders sent tanks and troops to crush the student-led protests.

One of the protesters said : "This is a deep wound in the heart. After that night, I lost my friends. I can't find them anymore."

Ma Lik, a top pro-Beijing Hong Kong politician, set off a furor in the city earlier this month when he denied that the massacre ever took place.

Ma, chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, also questioned how tanks could have crushed people into minced meat, asking facetiously whether the same had been tried on a pig before.

Although his party has since apologized for Ma's comments, they sparked anger in the city and was responsible for the high turnout on Sunday, some protesters said.

"We have Ma Lik to thank, so that we remember this," a woman at the rally told television reporters.

Hong Kong and the former Portuguese enclave of Macau are the only places in China where people are allowed to commemorate those killed in 1989.

In the wake of the crackdown, the Chinese government condemned the protests as a counter-revolutionary rebellion, though it has never publicly accounted for those killed.