China again asked to come clean on Tiananmen massacre anniverary

(TibetanReview.net, Jun05, 2018) – The United States has on Jun 4 reiterated its call on China to come clean on its 1989 massacre on the Tiananmen Square of hundreds to possibly thousands of peaceful democracy protesters. China should disclose the details of people killed, detained or missing during the military crackdown 29 years ago, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said.

Pompeo marked the 29^th anniversary of the communist Party of China’s massacre of its own peacefully protesting students and workers by saying: “We remember the tragic loss of innocent lives.”

Making it clear in a statement for the occasion that the US was not alone in making the call, Pompeo has said, “We join others in the international community in urging the Chinese government to make a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing.”

Pompeo has quoted the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who wrote in his 2010 Nobel Peace Prize speech, delivered in absentia: “the ghosts of June 4^th have not yet been laid to rest.”

The statement also called on China to release those who had been jailed for their efforts to keep alive the memory of the crackdown and to stop harassing the protest’s participants and their families.

The Chinese government had referred to the massacre as the Jun 4 incident and with any discussion of the tragedy being rendered a crime. Any form of commemoration or discussion or even mention of the event is banned on the mainland.

In Hong Kong, a special administrative region, tens of thousands of people gather every year in Victoria Park in the evening of Jun 4 to remember the victims in the only large-scale public commemoration held on Chinese soil.

In Taiwan, considered by China as a breakaway province, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) issued a statement Jun 3 to mark the anniversary. It said human rights violations in China had worsened in the 29 years since the Tiananmen Square Massacre, despite that country making advances in other areas. It called on China to honor and protect its people’s rights and to acknowledge the facts of what occurred during the massacre.

The statement also said: “While Taiwan has already gone through its own period of authoritarianism, during which free expression was seen as a ‘dangerous and threatening thing’ to the government, history has taught us that free expression is a driving force for the advancement of civilized society.”