Fifty dissidents went on a hunger strike as Chinese authorities arrested at least nine activists in an attempt to prevent people from commemorating the anniversary of the June 4th, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, according to a human rights group and witnesses.
In four Chinese cities, 50 dissidents began a 24-hour hunger strike to remember the victims and to demand the government re-evaluate the incident, which it calls a "counter-revolutionary rebellion", a Hong Kong human rights group said.
Families of the victims, meanwhile, spent the day sweeping graves and thinking of their lost loved ones.
"To us, it's as if it happened yesterday," said Ms Su Bingxian, whose 21-year-old son was killed in the crackdown. "We just want the government to re-examine what happened."
Eleven years after the bloody suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the Chinese leadership refuses to allow its citizens to mark an event seen as one of the most tragic chapters in modern Chinese history. Police arrested three Christian activists in Beijing who had planned to gather to commemorate the victims, the Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said.
A group of 10 dissidents in the northern city of Xian were prevented from holding a similar gathering on Saturday night as police stood guard outside their homes, the centre said. One of them has been detained.
Three other activists, one from Beijing and two from the northeastern province of Liaoning, were detained for writing a letter to Chinese authorities requesting they re-examine the incident.
In addition, a reporter saw two young men taken into custody at the politically-sensitive campus of Beijing University on Saturday night when they lit candles to remember the victims.
Plainclothes campus security officials rushed over and blew out the candles and took the students to the campus security office for questioning.
A crowd of about 30 people had gathered near the auditorium, responding to a message on the campus bulletin board calling students to meet there at 8 p.m. to mark the anniversary.
The crowd watched anxiously as the two men were led away. Many people followed them to the security office, but were told to leave.
It was not clear whether the detained men were students.
Despite the heavy surveillance, dissidents and activists refused to let the anniversary go unnoticed.
Mr Chen Wei (31) said he has been refusing food every anniversary since 1992, because he could not forget what happened to his fellow demonstrators.
"China improved economically in the past few years, but in terms of politics, individual freedom, there's little improvement," he said. Mr Chen has served more than six years in prison.
Mr Zheng Baohe, one of the Xian dissidents who tried to gather on Saturday night, was placed under house arrest.
"We strongly protest this kind of wrongdoing. We urge the Chinese government to stop interfering in citizens' free assembly and allow the democratic movement in China to go forward," he said.
Meanwhile, Tiananmen Square was relatively quiet yesterday, with the number of police patrolling no greater than usual.
Soldiers of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) opened fired on unarmed protesters in Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3rd and the early morning of June 4th, 1989, killing hundreds, and by some eyewitness and human rights groups accounts, more than 1,000 demonstrators.
On June 6th, the then-government spokesman, Mr Yuan Mu, acknowledged on state-run TV that "nearly 300" people had been killed and 7,000 injured.