Tiananmen Square: 30 years after the massacre, Chinese censorship quotes the world



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Hundreds of people were killed on June 4, 1989, as People's Liberation Army troops repressed pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in and around Beijing. Demonstrations will be held and speeches will be delivered to commemorate the mbadacre and those who have died in cities around the world.

On Monday, the Mainland Affairs Council of Taiwan called on Beijing to "face historical errors and to apologize as soon as possible for the crackdown".

"In the past 30 years, Beijing has not had the courage to calmly reflect on the historical significance of the June 4 incident," the council statement said. "They have rather blocked the news, distorted the truth and tried to hide the crime."

Activists will meet in Washington Tuesday to bring together representatives of dozens of human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Monday that the mbadacre still stirred the conscience of "freedom-loving peoples around the world".

"We salute the Chinese people's heroes who bravely stood up in Tiananmen Square 30 years ago to claim their rights," he said, urging the Chinese government to "report publicly on this incident." ".

Thousands of people wear candles during a candlelight vigil on June 4, 2016 in Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

The biggest event will take place in Hong Kong, the only place on Chinese soil where big commemorations are held. A candlelight vigil has been held every year in Victoria Park since 1990. Hundreds of thousands of people attend important anniversaries.

But on the other side of the border, the Chinese authorities will carefully monitor any attempt to remember the mbadacre.

Tourists visited Tiananmen Square on Tuesday as usual, under close police surveillance and under frequent control of security checks.

On Monday, the Chinese government daily Global Times said the mbadacre was a "vaccination" against future "political unrest" in the country, denouncing China's economic progress in the decades that followed.

This was not the first Chinese comment on the birthday. Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Sunday, National Defense Minister Wei Fenghe said the crushing of the protests was "correct politics".

Visitors gather around the People's Heroes Monument in Tiananmen Square on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing on Tuesday, June 4, 2019.

A day that changed China

For weeks in 1989, hundreds of thousands of students and workers gathered in Tiananmen Square, in the heart of the Chinese capital, to demand more democracy as well as political and social reforms.

They faced the tanks in Tiananmen Square. Now, they want their children to forget it

At the height of the demonstrations, they seemed to be able to succeed, forcing a government that was already pursuing economic reform to also accept limited political liberalization. But the extremists won an internal battle within the ruling Communist Party and a crackdown was ordered.

This decision changed China forever, putting an end to the hopes of a progressive movement towards democracy. Today, the Communist Party is stronger than ever, with President Xi Jinping having recently canceled his term and served his sentence for life.

Beijing has always defended repression. Speaking at an international event on Sunday, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe described the Tiananmen protests as "political unrest that the central government had to appease."

"The government was decisive in putting an end to the turbulence, it was the right policy," he said.

The events of June 4 have been erased from history books in China and any discussion on repression is strictly censored and controlled. Tiananmen is a prime target of the Great Firewall, China's vast online censorship apparatus.

Tuesday will be a major test of this system, which activists have been trying to overcome for years using coded expressions such as "May 35" or "That Year". But it is a test that he will probably succeed with ease.

In the run-up to June 4, Internet users in China complained about difficulties in accessing virtual private networks, a common method of bypbading the firewall, while publications on Chinese social media have been restricted or suppressed, companies reinforcing censorship during this sensitive period.

June 4 has been dubbed "Internet Maintenance Day" for the number of websites that are disconnecting around the anniversary. Their owners then decided that it was safer to blacken than to accidentally publish something that could cause the authorities' eyes.

This type of mbad censorship is detrimental, according to Mak Hoi-wah, chairman of the June 4 museum in Hong Kong.

"Without understanding the historical facts, we will not be able to move forward," said Mak. "The Chinese government is trying to repress it because it does not want its people to remember their bad deeds."

Ben Westcott of CNN contributed to this article.

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