Security tight in Tiananmen 30 years after students 'died for nothing'
BEIJING (Reuters) – Tourists thronged Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Tuesday amid tighter-than-usual security, although most visitors approached by Reuters said they were unaware of the bloody crackdown on student-led protests 30 years ago or would not discuss it.
The anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, when Beijing sent troops and tanks to quell pro-democracy activists, is not spoken of openly in China and will not be formally marked by the government, which has ramped up censorship.
A 67-year-old man surnamed Li, sitting on a bench about a 10-minute walk from the square on Tuesday, said he remembered the events of June 4, 1989, and its aftermath clearly.
“I was on my way back home from work. Changan Avenue was strewn with burned-out vehicles. The People’s Liberation Army killed many people. It was a bloodbath,” he said.
Asked if he thought the government should give a full account of the violence, he said: “What’s the point? These students died for nothing.”
Among the students’ demands in 1989 were a free press and freedom of speech, disclosure of leaders’ assets and freedom to demonstrate. However, exiled former protest leaders say those goals are further away in China than ever before because the government has in the past decade suppressed a civil society nurtured by years of economic development.
Tiananmen also remains a point of contention between China and many Western countries, which have implored Chinese leaders to account for giving the People’s Liberation Army the order to open fire on their own people.
China’s Washington embassy angrily denounced criticism by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who called for China to release all political prisoners and offered his salute to “the heroes of the Chinese people who bravely stood up 30 years ago in Tiananmen Square to demand their rights”.
The embassy said in a statement: “China’s human rights are in the best period ever.” Pompeo had made his comments “out of prejudice and arrogance”, it said.
“Whoever attempts to patronise and bully the Chinese people in any name, or preach a ‘clash of civilizations’ to resist the trend of times will never succeed. They will only end up in the ash heap of history,” the embassy statement said.
China has never released a final death toll from the events on and around June 4. Estimates from human rights groups and witnesses range from several hundred to thousands.