BEIJING — Security forces kept a close watch on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square during Wednesday’s anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests, amid renewed calls for the release of political prisoners ahead of this year’s Beijing Summer Olympics.
No public commemorations of the protests were held. Instead, the square, like the rest of the Chinese capital, was adorned with symbols of the upcoming Olympics.
Exiled dissidents and human-rights groups have sought to link the two events, saying releasing political prisoners and allowing exiled student leaders to return would burnish the communist government’s image before the Olympic spotlight turns on Beijing.
At access points to Tiananmen Square, security officers searched bags for banners or leaflets containing dissident messages. Plainclothes officers used hand-held video cameras to supplement the dozens of permanent mounted cameras trained on the square.
Han Dongfang, who was imprisoned for his efforts to organize workers during the ’89 protests, said freeing prisoners could cement the image of current Chinese leaders as less corrupt and more people-oriented. Such a step would “allow them to close the door on that era and inaugurate a new chapter in Chinese politics,” Han, who now heads the Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin, wrote on the group’s website.
In Hong Kong, tens of thousands of activists gathered at Victoria Park with white candles to mourn those killed at Tiananmen, chanting slogans calling for democracy and the release of political dissidents.
“Despite being awarded the Olympics, the Chinese communist government has by far not improved its human-rights record,” Lee Chuek-Yan, a lawmaker and pro-democracy activist, told demonstrators, estimated by organizers at 48,000.
Discussion of the student movement and the June 3-4 military assault on the protesters in which hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed remains taboo within China. The communist leadership labeled the protest an anti-government riot and has never offered a full accounting of the crackdown.
The U.S. State Department urged China to make a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing in the crackdown. It called on the international community to urge China to release prisoners still serving sentences from the protests.
