HONG KONG, May 8 (Reuter) - Hong Kong pro-democracy activists planning protests to mourn the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 vowed the colony's handover to China would not stop them commemorating the event in future.

"We will still hold the gathering even if they ban it," veteran campaigner Szeto Wah told a news conference Thursday.

He said the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movement in China plans to hold its traditional candlelit vigil June 4 in memory of those who died when Chinese troops and tanks crushed the student-led pro-democracy movement around Beijing's Tiananmen Square eight years ago.

They also plan to display in a Hong Kong park a 26 ft. high sculpture titled the Pillar of Shame by Danish artist Jen Galschiot that is composed of 50 painfully twisted human bodies.

It is not clear whether Hong Kong's post-colonial government that will be led by former shipping magnate Tung Chee-hwa will seek to ban the annual pro-democracy protest.

But many believe this year's gathering will be the last major demonstration before the British colony reverts to Chinese rule at midnight June 30.

Tung has sparked controversy over plans to force demonstrators to get police permits before staging protests and to prohibit foreign funding for local political parties.

Earlier this week he said demonstrations promoting independence for Taiwan or Tibet should not be allowed in Hong Kong after the handover to China.

Szeto said the Alliance had written to Tung urging him to attend this year's June 4 protest.

The leader of Hong Kong's populist Democratic Party, Martin Lee, who emerged as a civic leader in the wake of the Tiananmen protests, described Tung's views on elections as outdated.

"What Mr.Tung has shown, I think it's clear, is that his set of Chinese values is at least two generations outdated compared with modern Hong Kong people's thinking," Lee said Thursday.

"What Mr. Tung said clearly indicates that if people demonstrate about things which he agrees, then you can demonstrate."

But a senior Chinese official responsible for Hong Kong Affairs sought to sooth fears over a loss of democracy and rights in post-handover Hong Kong, which will become a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China after the handover.

"The Hong Kong SAR will develop democracy in a gradual and orderly way," Chen Ziying, deputy director of Beijing's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, said.

Chen added the ultimate goal was having both the leader and the legislature picked by universal suffrage.

He also said Hong Kong would retain its way of life beyond the 50-year period that Beijing had already pledged.

"The One Country, Two Systems policy will not change for 50 years after 1997 and it will remain unchanged even beyond that period," Chen told a business lunch in Hong Kong.