BEIJING: China deployed its vast security apparatus on Wednesday to snuff out commemoration of the suppression of pro-democracy protests around Tiananmen Square 25 years ago, flooding the streets with police as censors scrubbed the Internet clean of any mention of the crackdown.
Several governments including the United States urged China to account for what happened on June 4, 1989, comments that riled China, which has said the protest movement was “counter-revolutionary”. Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama used the anniversary to call on China to embrace democracy.
China has never released a death toll for the crackdown, but estimates from human rights groups and witnesses range from several hundred to several thousand.
Troops shot their way into central Beijing after demonstrators had clogged Tiananmen Square in Beijing for about six weeks. There were also protests in many other cities.
Taking no chances on Wednesday, police, soldiers and plainclothes security personnel enveloped Tiananmen Square, checking identity cards and rummaging through bags looking for any hint that people might try and sneak onto the square to commemorate the day.
Police escorted a Reuters reporter off the square, which was thronged with tourists, saying it was closed to foreign media. Police also detained another Reuters journalist for trying to report on the anniversary in one of Beijing’s university districts, releasing him after a few hours.
Public discussion of the crackdown is off-limits in China. Many young people are unaware of what happened because of years of government efforts to banish memories of the People’s Liberation Army shooting its own citizens.
“They have covered up history. They don’t want people to know the truth of what they did,” veteran activist Hu Jia told Reuters from his home in Beijing, where he said police were present to prevent him from leaving.
“Nobody would have confidence in them if they knew what they did… They should have fallen because of what they did,” he added, speaking by mobile telephone.
While the anniversary has never been publicly marked in mainland China, more than 150,000 people are expected to gather on Wednesday evening in Hong Kong for a candlelight vigil. A large number of mainland Chinese are expected to join the event in the former British territory, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 but remains a free-wheeling, capitalist hub. The vigil has been held in Hong Kong every year since 1989. China’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday defended the crackdown, saying the government had chosen the correct path for the sake of the people.
The protests began in April 1989 as a demonstration by university students in Beijing to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang, the reformist Communist Party chief who had been ousted by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.
The protests grew into broader demands for an end to corruption as well as calls for democracy.
Many Chinese would balk at the idea of mass revolution today. China is now the world’s second biggest economy, with most Chinese enjoying individual and economic freedoms never accorded them before.
“I don’t think it can happen again,” said a Beijing resident who gave his family name as Xu.
But Wu’er Kaixi, a leading figure in the pro-democracy movement of 1989, said Chinese people could rise up once more against the Communist Party in anger at anything from endemic graft to the country’s badly polluted air, water and soil.
International criticism
Rights group Amnesty International has said at least 66 people had been detained in the period leading up to the anniversary.
That includes prominent human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang and four other activists who were detained last month after attending a private meeting at an apartment in Beijing to discuss the crackdown, prompting concern in the United States and Europe.
The White House said in a statement that the United States continued to honour the memories of those who gave their lives on June 4, and called for a full accounting of what happened.
Japan, engaged in a bitter territorial dispute with China, used the anniversary to urge Beijing to respect human rights and the rule of law. United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay called on China to reveal the truth about what had happened 25 years ago. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei expressed anger at the comments from the United States and the United Nations, saying they interfered in China’s internal affairs. In a daily news briefing, he also said the Dalai Lama had “ulterior motives” for his Tiananmen comments. (Reuters)
