Even as China's clampdown means that the commemoration of the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Hong Kong continues to be disrupted for the second year in a row, activists in Japan more than made up by coming out in good numbers to again highlight the misdeeds of the Chinese Communist Party over the past few decades.
Japanese citizens, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians and others joined their Hong Kong friends in large numbers to take a stand outside the Chinese embassy in Tokyo, and in other places across Japan.
Calling for everyone never to forget Tiananmen Square, the participants highlighted the various human rights and other violations of international law by China: genocide in Xinjiang, suppression of the mother tongue in Inner Mongolia, cultural genocide in Tibet, violation of basic rights of speech and expression in Hong Kong, among others.
Later in the day, the activists intend to hold a candlelight vigil to remember the thousands who died in Beijing during the early days of June 1989, and countless others who have been at the receiving end of some of the harshest measures by the Chinese authorities.
They have also attempted to intimidate Tiananmen student leaders outside of China, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
In March, the US Department of Justice revealed that five people acting as agents of the Chinese government had stalked and harassed US-based critics of the government, including Tiananmen student leader Xiong Yan, who is running for the US House of Representatives.
The Chinese government has long ignored domestic and international calls for justice for the Tiananmen Massacre, and some of the sanctions that the European Union and the US imposed in response have over the years been weakened or evaded.
The lack of a sustained, coordinated, international response to the massacre and ensuing crackdown is one factor in Beijing's increasingly brazen human rights violations, including the mass detention of an estimated one million Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang and the direct imposition of national security legislation in Hong Kong that suppresses fundamental freedoms.
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