Police swarm Tiananmen Square on anniversary
AP:
— “In Tiananmen Square, police were ready to pounce at the first sign of protest. In Hong Kong, a sea of candles flickered in the hands of tens of thousands who vented their grief and anger.”
— “Two starkly contrasting faces of China were on display Thursday, the 20th anniversary of the military’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators — from Beijing’s rigid control in suppressing any dissent, to freewheeling Hong Kong, which enjoys freedoms all but absent on the mainland.”
— “Tiananmen Square was blanketed by uniformed and plainclothes security officers who were ready to silence any potential demonstration, and there were few hints that the vast plaza was the epicenter of a student-led movement that was crushed on June 3-4, 1989, shocking the world.”
— “Police barred foreign journalists from entering the square and threatened them with violence, even barring them from covering the daily raising of China’s national flag.”
— “Dissidents and families of victims were confined to their homes or forced to leave Beijing, part of sweeping government efforts to prevent online debate or organized commemorations of the anniversary.”
— “The extraordinary security in Beijing came after government censors shut down social networking and image-sharing Web sites such as Twitter and Flickr and blacked out CNN and other foreign news channels each time they showed stories about Tiananmen.”
— “‘We’ve been under 24-hour surveillance for a week and aren’t able to leave home to mourn. It’s totally inhuman,’ said Xu Jue, whose son was 22 when he was shot in the chest by soldiers and bled to death on June 4, 1989.”
— “Police were also stationed outside the home of Wang Yannan, the daughter of Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party leader deposed for sympathizing with the pro-democracy protesters, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. Wang has never been politically active.”
See also:
— June 4 – Estimated 150,000 Call for Democracy in Hong Kong