Crowds gather for Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil
AFP / Anthony WALLACESemi-autonomous Hong Kong has seen tens of thousands gather at the candlelit vigil in Victoria Park since 1990
Crowds assembled in Hong Kong on Monday in memory of the victims of China's Tiananmen Square crackdown but young activists are increasingly questioning the annual vigil's relevance.
Semi-autonomous Hong Kong has seen tens of thousands gather at the candlelit vigil in Victoria Park since 1990, while any mention of Beijing's brutal crackdown on students calling for democracy on June 4, 1989, remains strictly censored in the mainland.
Those who streamed in to the park Monday held candles aloft and shouted "End one-party dictatorship!" as well as calling for the release of activists jailed in China.
Organised by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, a group of veteran campaigners, the vigil has always had the democratisation of China as its central message.
However, since mass student-led Umbrella Movement rallies failed to win political reform for Hong Kong in 2014, more young activists and students have turned to "localism", which focuses on local identity and autonomy and tends to reject any associations with China.
Some pro-independence activists call for a complete split from the mainland.
AFP / Laurence CHUPolice and organizer estimates for the turnout at Hong Kong's annual Tiananmen vigil
As a result, student unions in Hong Kong have boycotted the Tiananmen vigil for the past three years.
"China's progress for democracy is really slow, and rather hopeless. If (the democracy movements of China and Hong Kong) are interlinked, wouldn't that in turn negate Hong Kong's progress?" the president of the University of Hong Kong's student union, Wong Ching-fung, told local media last week.
A public opinion poll by the University of Hong Kong found that the proportion of people who think Hong Kongers have "a responsibility to instigate the development of democracy in China" has dropped from 58 percent to 56 percent this year.
The proportion of those who believe Hong Kongers do not have a responsibility to do so has climbed steadily since 2014 to 31 percent this year.
- Spirit alive -
Although major crowds still turn up to the park -- organisers put the figure at 115,000 Monday, slightly up on last year -- small alternative events are popping up around the city and numbers are lower than in the past.
However, those who attended said they still felt a duty to pay tribute to the demonstrators who had died when Chinese authorities sent in tanks to crush a peaceful seven-week sit-in to demand democratic reforms.
Hundreds -- by some estimates more than a thousand -- were killed.
Leading Hong Kong democracy campaigner Joshua Wong, 21, said people should care about what happens in China because "China has been continuously suppressing Hong Kong".
"June 4 is the best example to let the international community know the Chinese communist regime's inhumane, brutal nature," Wong told AFP.
AFP / Anthony WALLACEHong Kong's Tiananmen vigil has always had the democratisation of China as its central message
Office worker Vincent Chow, 25, said he felt the Hong Kong government no longer listened to citizens' voices and wanted to make sure his was heard.
"Young people now might feel too removed from the democracy movement and fight for freedom, so I hope to keep this spirit alive," he told AFP.
Retiree Sammy Au, 71, added he did not feel the vigil was about democratising China but was a tribute to the "selfless" acts of the students who died.
"If I were the last person remaining, I would still come out," he told AFP.
The vigil came as two pro-independence former lawmakers were given four-week jail sentences Monday for participating in a fracas in the legislature in 2016.
A number of activists have been prosecuted on protest-related charges since the 2014 rallies as concerns grow that Hong Kong's freedoms are under threat from Beijing.
CONRED/AFP/File / HOHandout picture released by the National Disaster Relief Agency of Guatemala showing the Fuego volcano erupting on June 3, 2018
The eruption of the Fuego volcano in Guatemala was likely a "pyroclastic surge" similar to the one that destroyed the ancient city of Pompeii, says volcanologist David Rothery of The Open University in England.
The word pyroclastic is derived from the ancient Greek for "fire" and "fragments".
Rothery analysed for AFP the latest eruption which has killed at least 25 people:
Q: What type of an eruption was this?
A: "The cause of most deaths at the current eruption of Fuego (Guatemala) is being widely reported as a 'river of lava'. This is probably an inexpert description or a mistranslation. Fuego does not characteristically produce long fluid lava flows like those currently erupting from Kilauea (Hawaii). They are unlikely to reach inhabited areas, and are not the main hazard at this volcano.
"A lava flow (molten rock) rarely travels fast enough to engulf people...
"The videos and still images that I've seen suggest instead one or more pyroclastic flows. This is when a violently erupted mass of rock fragments and hot gas finds itself too dense to rise as an ash column, and instead cascades down the volcano's slopes.
"Pyroclastic flows (or surges) can move at over 100 kilometres (62 miles) per hour, and may be hot enough to glow like molten lava. They can travel further, as well as much faster, than lava flows. This is the phenomenon that claimed many lives during the famous AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii."
Q: Why now?
A: "No particular reason. There is no link to any recent earthquakes or to the eruption in Hawaii. It takes a LONG time for magma to accumulate at depth and rise toward the surface before it can erupt. The volcano 'plumbing' system below Fuego feels no influence whatsoever from events in Hawaii."
Q: Why was this eruption not predicted?
A: "I don’t know. Fuego has been erupting since 2002, and was continuously active in 2017. On 17 May a 25-metre (82-foot) wide lahar (volcanic mudflow) came down the mountain, and there were explosions and ash plumes during 19-21 May.
"Given the activity... it might have been wise to declare an evacuation zone around the volcano."
Q: Is it over?
A: "The Guatemalan volcano monitoring authority (Insivumeh) is now reporting the eruption as over, although lahars remain a hazard when rain falls on newly-deposited ash. .. When rain falls on new ash it can turn into a dense slurry (like wet concrete) and devastate alleys (bridges can be destroyed.
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