China silent on anniversary of 1989 crackdown

Jun 4, 2009, 6:52 GMT

   Beijing - China's ruling Communist Party and most ordinary people ignored Thursday's 20th anniversary of a military crackdown on democracy protests as scores of activists were reportedly under house arrest or other forms of police control.

   Some overseas dissidents had urged Chinese people to wear white clothes Thursday as a sign of mourning for the hundreds reportedly killed in the crackdown, but there was no sign on Beijing's streets that people had heeded the campaign.

   Authorities intensified security across the city, posting hundreds of extra police and security guards at the homes of dissidents and around Tiananmen Square, the focal point of the 1989 protests, which called for an end to official corruption and demanded political and social rights.

   No state media mentioned the anniversary, except for the English edition of the Global Times, which is run by the official People's Daily, mainly to serve a foreign audience.

   The Hong Kong-based group Chinese Human Rights Defenders said it had evidence that police had harassed or placed under house arrest at least 65 activists to prevent them from taking part in activities to mark the anniversary.

   'These individuals have been taken into police custody, had their movements restricted, been forced to leave their homes, or otherwise threatened or monitored by police,' the group said.

   It said it had counted nearly 160 websites that were closed recently for 'system maintenance' to prevent people organizing activities via the internet.

   BBC News and the Twitter networking site were among the websites that were blocked but are usually accessible in China.

   Late Wednesday, several dozen police and about 40 journalists stood around a building in Muxidi, 4 kilometres east of Tiananmen Square, where members of the Tiananmen Mothers group had planned to mourn relatives who died near the building 20 years ago.

   Ding Zilin, a co-founder of the group, told the German Press Agency dpa earlier that she planned to arrive at Muxidi at 11 pm if the police allowed her to mark the death of her 17-year-old son there, as they had done for the past two years.

   But no mourners had appeared by midnight, possibly indicating that, as Ding said she feared, the police had prevented her from leaving her home. Ding's home telephone went unanswered.

   Dissident Zeng Jinyan said on her blog Wednesday that she argued with the authorities for nearly six hours to be allowed to leave her home, but her protests were fruitless.

   'Today and tomorrow I have absolutely no way to go out, so I have cancelled the meeting I planned for my mother's birthday today,' Zeng said.

   Zeng's husband, fellow dissident Hu Jia, was presented in absentia with the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought last year. China sentenced Hu to three and a half years in prison in March 2008 for 'inciting subversion of state power.'

   The government continues to defend the 1989 crackdown, claiming it was necessary to guarantee China's stability, which, it said, has laid the foundation for the rapid economic growth of the past 20 years.

   'History has shown that the party and government have put China on the proper socialist path that serves the fundamental interests of the Chinese people,' Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Tuesday.

   The US-based Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights group, recently urged China to release the estimated 30 people still imprisoned for their role in the 1989 democracy movement.

   The protests ended when troops with tanks and live ammunition moved through Beijing overnight on June 3-4, 1989, reportedly killing hundreds of unarmed civilians and wounding thousands who allegedly blocked their route.