Silence and strengthened state security in China on the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown

BEIJING, China (AP) — Checkpoints and rows of police vehicles lined a main road leading to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square as China stepped up security on the 35th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on protests in favor of democracy.

China has long erased all memory of the killings, when the Chinese government ordered the military to end months-long protests and maintain communist rule. Around 180,000 armed soldiers and police arrived with tanks and armored vehicles and fired on the crowds as they moved towards Tiananmen Square.

The death toll remains unknown to this day. Hundreds, if not thousands, are believed to have been killed during an operation that began on the night of June 3 and continued until the following morning.

Throughout China, the event remains a sensitive and taboo subject, heavily censored, and any mention or reference on social networks is deleted.

Life in the city continued normally. Hundreds of tourists lined the streets leading to the gateways to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Those who lost their families during the crackdown cannot gather or mourn in public.

Asked by a foreign journalist to comment on the 35th anniversary at a daily Foreign Ministry press briefing on Monday, spokesman Mao Ning shrugged off the event.

“The Chinese government has long reached a clear conclusion about the political turmoil that took place in the late 1980s,” Mao said, without elaborating.

In Hong Kong, a carnival organized by pro-Beijing groups occupied a park that for decades had been the site of an annual vigil marking the anniversary, less than a week after police arrested eight people on the social networks commemorating the repression carried out by the new local government of Hong Kong. national security law.

In 2021, three former leaders of the group that organized the vigil, including activist Chow Hang-tung, were charged with subversion under a national security law imposed by Beijing. The group was also disbanded.

Yet some residents chose to remember the bloody event privately, including running 6.4 kilometers (4 miles) on Monday – a reference to the date June 4 – and sharing Tiananmen-related content on social media .

Over the past week, city authorities have stepped up efforts to erase traces of the 1989 crackdown. Several pro-democracy activists told The Associated Press that police had inquired about their plans for Tuesday .

On Monday, police also briefly arrested a performance artist on a street in Causeway Bay, a bustling shopping district in Hong Kong, near the park where the vigil was being held.

An independent bookstore, which displayed “35/5” on its window – a roundabout reference to the date of the crackdown as “May 35” – wrote on Instagram that police officers were stationed outside the store for an hour on Sunday, at during which they recorded the identity details of the customers.

Commemorative events have mushroomed overseas as China cracks down on memories of Tiananmen in Hong Kong and the mainland. This year, vigils are planned in Washington DC, London, Brisbane and Taipei, among other cities, and a growing number of conferences, rallies, exhibitions and plays on the subject have emerged.