The UN expressed his “concern” today at the arrests in Hong Kong yesterday of people commemorating the 34th anniversary of the bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, with China responding that the financial center is moving from “chaos” to prosperity.

Hong Kong police said they arrested 23 people on Sunday for “disturbing the public peace” as well as a 53-year-old woman for “obstructing police officers”, on the 34th anniversary of the violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing in 1989.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights she requested, through a post on Twitter, the release of all those arrested for “exercising their right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly”.

For its part, China’s foreign ministry pointed out in a statement late yesterday that “today Hong Kong is moving from chaos to stability and prosperity following the right path of the ‘one country, two systems’ principle.”

“Foreign powers”, including the US, should abide by international law and stop Hong Kong’s “futile political manipulation” aimed at containing China, a ministry spokesman said.

For more than 30 years, tens of thousands of people have gathered each year in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park for a candlelight vigil in memory of the Tiananmen victims.

But in 2020, Beijing imposed a national security law on the former British colony to silence any dissent, following massive 2019 pro-democracy protests. Hong Kong authorities have since put an end to the vigils, which had never been allowed in mainland China.

Hundreds of police officers were yesterday stopping and checking people near Victoria Park, while armored vehicles were deployed in the area.

Hong Kong activists say the police actions are part of a broader campaign by China to suppress any dissenting voice in the city, which Beijing has promised freedoms for 50 years under its “one country, two systems” model. when it was handed over to China in 1997 by Britain.