A group of families known as the Tiananmen Mothers visited a cemetery in Beijing on Thursday, the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, to pay respects to the eight victims of the brutal Communist crackdown buried there.
Hong Kong’s RTHK reported that the Tiananmen Mothers were afraid they would be barred from entering the cemetery due to coronavirus restrictions, but they were allowed to make their visit after providing ID cards to the very large group of both uniformed and plainclothes police that surrounded the venue.
“Huang Jinping, who lost her husband in the crackdown, read out a memorial speech, saying they would not give up their quest for the truth, their demand for compensation, and for officials responsible for the killings to be held accountable,” RTHK reported.
The Tiananmen Mothers, who counted 127 members when the Wall Street Journal profiled them a year ago, are determined to keep the memory of the massacre alive despite the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ham-fisted efforts to erase it from history.
The CCP aggressively punishes those who dispute the official Party account that only 23 students died at Tiananmen, while somehow managing to kill almost 300 of the Chinese soldiers who were sent to bring them down. The actual death toll runs into the thousands, according to international monitors and human rights activists. Some of the Tiananmen Mothers lost family members who were not even part of the Tiananmen demonstrations; they were bystanders who just happened to be in the way when Chinese troops opened fire.
The Tiananmen Mothers say they have been subjected to constant “terror and suffocation” from the Chinese government. Many of them are kept under constant surveillance.
“All these actions undoubtedly desecrate the souls of those who perished in Tiananmen Square and insult the honor of the living,” the group said in a 2016 open letter.
The founder of the Tiananmen Mothers, Ding Zilin, was intimidated into silence by the CCP after years of especially harsh restrictions, the death of her husband, and a successful strategy of preventing fellow Tiananmen Mothers from communicating with her.
“If the government had conscientiously listened to the opinions of the people, instead of ending the student movement in such a cruel and barbaric manner, the process of civilizing the Chinese society would have accelerated its pace to integrate with the civilized society of the world, and the corruption in Chinese officialdom would not have been so rampant,” the group said in a statement on Thursday.
“Our children and loved ones were killed in the June Fourth massacre. For 31 years, every family of the victims has lived in the midst of this suffering and life’s arduousness. We, as citizens of this country and relatives of the victims, have every reason to question the Chinese ruling party and the Chinese government. The government bears unavoidable responsibility for the harm done to all the citizens through the bloody tragedy that year. Legally, you owe the people accountability, and morally, you owe the people an apology,” they said to the Chinese government.
“The government has remained silent on the June Fourth massacre, without demonstrating the slightest trace of remorse. With the passage of time, 60 people among our group of victims’ families have passed away. Time can erase our lives, but our group ’s resolve in the pursuit of fairness and justice will not alter,” they vowed.
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