TIANANMEN SQUARE was overwhelmed by thousands of plain-clothes and uniformed police and soldiers patrolling the vast plaza yesterday, as China uneasily marked 20 years since the crackdown on the Beijing pro-democracy movement.
The level of security was baffling, since there is not really anyone left to protest in Beijing. All the main dissidents and democracy activists are either in exile, in prison or have been told to leave Beijing – or they are dead.
The square was in theory open to the public, but as I tried to pass through tight security – the same kind of tents were used as those in which visitors were screened during the Olympics last year – I was blocked when I showed my press card, and my companion was treated in heavy-handed fashion.
Moments later, I was prevented from shooting video footage of the square from the nearby road.
The heavy physical security is backed up by tight monitoring of other possible channels of dissent.
Government censors maintained their blackout of social networking and image-sharing websites such as Twitter and Flickr, and every time CNN went to its report on Tiananmen, the screen went black.
There is no question but that China has changed dramatically in the past two decades. Market reforms have lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, and transformed China into the world’s third largest economy.
This has won widespread approval among the population, rendering similar protests on the same scale as Tiananmen highly unlikely today.
People other than the security forces were in a definite minority on Tiananmen Square yesterday – at times it felt as if the ratio of military personnel to civilians was greater than it was 20 years ago.
Xu Jue, one of the Tiananmen Mothers group, whose son, Wu Xiangdong, was killed in the massacre, said she had been planning to attend a memorial service with Ding Zilin, whose 17-year-old son, Jiang Jielian, also died.
“We wanted to go to Muxidi to show respect and hold a small memorial ceremony for our sons. But those people just do not allow me to go anywhere for four days,” she said during a rare moment where her phone was working.
“Right now, my home phone works. But I am not sure for how long. We do not have basic human rights. I will keep trying. I am a 70-year-old woman now,” she said.
According to data gathered by the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group, 65 activists have been subjected to harassment from officials in order to prevent them from organising or taking part in activities commemorating the Tiananmen Massacre.
Dissidents have been trying to get the government to reassess its official verdict on the event, which is that it was a counter-revolutionary plot and that crushing it was necessary to enable economic growth.
To Beijing’s irritation, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton called on China to release all those still imprisoned in connection with the protests, to stop harassing those who took part and to begin a dialogue with the victims’ families.
“A China that has made enormous progress economically and is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal,” she said in a statement.
In Hong Kong, which enjoys a high degree of political autonomy, tens of thousands of people took part in a candlelight vigil in the city’s Victoria Park area.