Activists detained on Tiananmen anniv

Beijing / AFP

Chinese police have detained several activists while others were placed under surveillance for the anniversary of the bloody 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square, which was heavily policed on Saturday. On June 4 1989 military tanks rolled into the square in the centre of Beijing to crush pro-democracy protests, killing hundreds of unarmed civilians—by some estimates thousands.
Nearly three decades after the crackdown, the communist regime continues to forbid any debate on the subject, mention of which is banned from textbooks and the media, and censored on the Internet.
Six human rights activists, including the poet Liang Taiping, have been held by Beijing police since Thursday after holding a private ceremony commemorating “June 4”, the Chinese NGO Weiquanwang said.
The detained activists were suspected of “provoking quarrels and fomenting unrest”, the group said, adding another activist had “disappeared” in recent days in the capital. As in previous years, the “Tiananmen Mothers”, an association of parents who lost children during the violence, were placed under heavy surveillance in the lead up to the anniversary.
The square in the centre of Beijing was also under tight security on Saturday, with guards at the entry points into the iconic tourist spot checking the IDs and passports of visitors more closely than usual, an AFP photographer at the scene said.
Around a dozen parents from the Tiananmen Mothers visited a Beijing cemetery on Saturday where many of those killed in the crackdown are buried.
They said they were outnumbered by security forces as they paid their respects at the graves of their children. “We have been under surveillance since last week… 30 (plainclothes policemen) were at the cemetery,” said Zhang Xianling, whose 19-year-old son was killed in 1989.
The Tiananmen Mothers penned an open letter slamming the “27 years of white terror and suffocation” they have been subjected to by the authorities.