‘Every person in a free society, including the United States, should know that the Chinese Communist Party is the enemy of freedom and democracy,’ said Wang Dan
WASHINGTON–A bipartisan group of lawmakers gathered in the capital today to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre and celebrate the continued struggle for democracy in China.
The event near the steps of the Capitol Building was led by members of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and featured several survivors of the 1989 incident in Tiananmen Square.
“We stand with the victims of Tiananmen Square and all those currently facing the oppression of the Chinese Communist Party,” Select Committee Chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) said.
June 4 marks the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, in which communist troops in Beijing mobilized against thousands of student-led demonstrators, killing hundreds or thousands of unarmed civilians.
Estimates vary due to CCP efforts to suppress discussion of the event, but most sources claim that the CCP’s military wing slaughtered between 500 and 1,000 protesters.
Perhaps the most famous image of the event in the United States, though one heavily censored in China, is a short video of the “tank man,” an unknown Chinese man who stood in front of a column of tanks as they were leaving the day after the massacre.
The man’s identity, and his ultimate fate, remain unknown all these years.
Nevertheless, Select Committee ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) held a poster featuring a photo of the incident. The tanks, he said, were emblematic of the “thuggish, brutal Chinese Communist Party that thought to squash the freedom of this man and countless others.”
Mr. Krishnamoorthi condemned CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping for ongoing crackdowns on speech and expression in China, as well as various other human rights abuses.
“[Xi is] telling the world that he will send those tanks again against anyone who stands up for freedom, and he will deem his own people enemies of the state,” he said.
