More than two decades have passed since Chinese tanks faced off with pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, leaving hundreds dead. Today, China is marking the bloody anniversary by censoring all references to the event and hardening its stance against global action on another violent crackdown: the crisis in Syria.
For those living in China, signs of the anniversary are conspicuously absent. Beijing dispatched security forces to quell any attempt to memorialise the event and has blocked all references to the uprising online. Even references to the country's benchmark stock-trading index were swept up in the censor's net after its falling value Monday happened to correspond with the date of the Tiananmen massacre (64.89 points = June 4, 1989).
Meanwhile, China continues to block international action on the increasingly bloody repression of Syria's pro-democracy movement by the Assad regime. "The Syrian question should be resolved by the Syrian people,” said a cautionary (and self-referential) commentary in the government-backed People’s Daily. “Outside powers do not have the right to stick their hands in.”
The US marked the massacre's anniversary by calling on China to release protesters imprisoned during the 1989 crackdown. Human Rights Watch estimates that 20 are still being held in Chinese jails.
Further reading: The Atlantic magazine has a striking slideshow of Tiananmen Square, then and now.
