“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
- George Orwell
By GEOFFREY YORK
BEIJING — Eighteen years after China ordered tanks to crush student protests, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre has been marked by a police crackdown on dissidents, grief by the relatives of the dead, a strong call for justice from the United States – and virtual silence from the Canadian government.
Despite its louder talk on human rights during the past year, the Conservative cabinet said nothing on the Tiananmen anniversary yesterday. It declined to join the United States in its call for a “full accounting” of the “brutal and tragic events” when the Chinese military killed hundreds – perhaps thousands – of student demonstrators in Beijing on June 4, 1989.
At least six dissidents were reportedly rounded up and confined to their homes yesterday as Beijing put in place its usual security measures to prevent any protests on the anniversary of the massacre.
Several other people were detained at Tiananmen Square itself as police kept a close eye on anyone who might try to mark the anniversary.
The United States issued an unusually strong statement on Friday, three days before the anniversary. It noted that China has never released an accurate count of the number of people killed or injured by the military on June 4, 1989.
“The fullest possible accounting by the Chinese government of those killed, detained or missing is long overdue,” a spokesman for the U.S. State Department said.
“Many in China and elsewhere are unaware that thousands of Chinese citizens were arrested and sentenced without trial in 1989, and an estimated 100 to 200 still languish in prison for Tiananmen-related activities,” the spokesman said.
Canada did not issue an official statement to mark the anniversary. A spokeswoman for the Canadian embassy in Beijing said there would be no statement about the anniversary and a spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Department confirmed that.
Despite heavy police scrutiny, a group of family members, the Tiananmen Mothers, was able to organize two small memorial events in Beijing in the days leading up to the anniversary. The group includes more than 125 mothers and relatives of those who were killed on June 4, 1989.
This year, the group’s leader, Ding Zilin, was allowed for the first time to place flowers and a photo on the spot where her son was shot and killed during the massacre.
A few days earlier, Ms. Ding and 20 other group members held a round-table discussion about the massacre for the first time. “Everyone here has a bloody and tearful story,” Ms. Ding told the meeting, according to a transcript provided by a human-rights group. “We can’t let the next generation suffer such killings again, and we can’t let other mothers suffer our pain again.”
Du Dongxu, a retired military official and veteran of the Korean War, recalled how his wife was killed in the crackdown on June 4. They were sitting on the steps of their apartment building, chatting with neighbours and workers, when the troops moved in. “Suddenly gunshots came in our direction,” he said. “A bullet hit my wife in the abdomen. She fell on the ground with blood flying everywhere. Our building was 200 metres from the street where the troops were located. How can you not call it a massacre when someone is killed so blindly?”
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