Human rights defenders keep memories alive of 1989 Tiananmen massacre, in defiance of Chinese regime’s censorship.
When troops rolled into Beijing and Chinese authorities told everyone over loudspeakers to stay home, Yuan Hongbing did the opposite, jumping right into the center of the action.
Amid screaming, gunshots, and tanks, Mr. Yuan ran back and forth between hospitals and Tiananmen Square, carrying the injured on his back.
On the square’s edge, military tanks chased several fleeing student protesters, smashing their bodies against a metal fence by the road curb.
One of them, even in death, was still holding a flag with both hands.
The blood gushing out sounded louder than the rumbling tank engines, said Mr. Yuan, whose own shirt was soaked with the blood from people he tried to rescue.
“This is the brutality of the CCP,” he told The Epoch Times, using the acronym for the Chinese Communist Party.
Thirty-five years have passed since the events of that bloody night, now known as the Tiananmen Square massacre, when the regime opened fire on unarmed students who had aspired to steer communist China toward openness and democracy.
The estimated death toll ranges in the hundreds to the thousands, although a declassified 2017 British cable put the number as high as 10,000.
Defiance
Mr. Yuan, a law professor at Peking University at the time, eventually escaped China after spending half a year in detention over his activism.
Many others who survived suffered retaliation, losing coveted careers and facing continued surveillance from Chinese police.
The issue remains one of the most heavily censored topics in China today, with authorities detaining activists or putting them under house arrest ahead of the anniversary in a bid to prevent them from commemorating the event.
Internet censors are also watchful for keywords related to it. In October 2023, images capturing two embracing Chinese track athletes who competed in lanes six and four following a 100-meter hurdles final at the Asian Games were scrubbed from Chinese media after the numbers inadvertently formed the combination of “6-4,” a widely seen reference to the date of the 1989 massacre.
In Hong Kong, the annual vigil that once drew as many as 180,000 people at its peak has vanished as the regime tightens its grip.
By Eva Fu
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