HUNDREDS of security forces stood guard at a fenced-off Tiananmen Square yesterday to prevent any attempt to mark the 20th anniversary of the killing of hundreds of pro-democracy protesters.
Two decades on, even as the country's booming economy turns it into a world power, the political repressions that Chinese students fought, and failed, to end in 1989 were in full force. Internet sites remained shut down, BBC and CNN broadcasts were
blacked out at any mention of Tiananmen, and victims' families were not allowed to mourn at the square.
Uniformed police and plain-clothes officers blanketed the area, armed mainly with walkie-talkies and umbrellas but using both efficiently to block cameras and any attempt at protest. The metal fence around the square had controlled security points with metal detectors and X-ray machines.
Even relatives of those killed in the crackdown on 4 June, 1989, were prevented from leaving their homes for quiet remembrance of their loved ones. Ding Zilin, a retired professor whose 17-year-old son was shot dead, was, for the first time in three years, prevented from a night-time visit to the site of his death to lay flowers.
Another parent, Xu Jue, was under heavier surveillance after police stopped her going to her son's grave at nightfall earlier this week. "In over 20 years, the authorities never revealed what really happened nor talked to the victims' families," Ms Xu said.
The scene in Beijing was in stark contrast to last night's annual candlelight vigil in Hong Kong – now a special administrative region of China – which drew a crowd of 100,000.
China reacted angrily to a call from US secretary of state Hillary Clinton to "examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal".
A spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, Qin Gang, described her remarks as "crudely meddling in Chinese domestic affairs", adding: "Today is like any other day. Stable."
Officialdom's 20 years of ignoring calls for a public inquiry and the release of an official, credible death toll have had some impact on the next generation. On a quiet street less than three blocks from Tiananmen Square, manned at one end by a police van, young passers-by had little to no idea why so many officers were on duty. "What is it, swine flu?" asked a woman of 21. She conceded having heard of "that" event at Tiananmen, but dismissed it as no longer relevant to up-and-coming members of China's middle class. "I think it's important to know our history, but not necessarily to let it affect us," she said.
The only state-linked acknowledgement of the anniversary was in the Communist-controlled, English-language Global Times, which carried a front-page story about the "June 4 Tiananmen incident" – a first in the Chinese media. But it varied little from the official state line, mentioning the deaths of soldiers but not the hundreds of unarmed civilians killed, and it was not carried in the newspaper's Chinese-language version.
