Three Chinese dissidents who spent much of the past 20 years behind bars for marring Mao Zedong's portrait at Tiananmen Square said the students who led that movement have failed to continue the struggle.
Heralded as the "three heroes of Tiananmen" by the Chinese dissident circle, the young men pelted dye-filled eggs onto the ultimate symbol of Communist rule on May 23rd, 1989.
They desecrated an icon of the Communist Party at the very spot where Mao declared the People's Republic of China, but their act also ruffled student protesters who were distrustful of the outsiders from Hunan and informed on them to police.
After a long periods of imprisonment and upended lives, the three childhood friends met in Washington before the 20th anniversary of the protests.
Tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square before dawn on June 4th, 1989, to crush weeks of student and worker protests. Today, China smothered the square with police to prevent commemoration of the crackdown.
Twenty years ago, when the student protests in the capital brewed, Lu Decheng, then a bus driver, Yu Zhijian, a middle school teacher, and Yu Dongyue, an arts editor of Liuyang Daily, founded the Hunan Petition Group in their hometown.
Just before martial law was imposed, they boarded a train to Beijing, where they hoisted banners and defiled the portrait of Mao.
"Our act provoked people to rethink the legality of the Communist dictatorship," Yu Zhijian said.
But some student protesters criticized them for polluting the "purity of the democratic movement" and turned them over to police, said Wang Dan, one of the student leaders.
Another activist, Wang Juntao, said many students were afraid "disorderly conduct" could be used by authorities "as an excuse to initiate violent crackdown."
To this date, many dissidents remain puzzled by the arrest, which has generated debate among the student leaders.
The Chinese government has never released a death toll at Tiananmen. Thousands of people were arrested and human rights groups estimate 30 to 50 remain in prison. These three have captured attention because of the boldness of their act and the controversy surrounding their arrest.
Mr Lu said he forgave the informers.
"But I'm disappointed that many of them did not continue to spearhead the democratisation of China," he said. "We could have used different means to achieve the same objective."
Former student leaders never showed clear goals or strong leadership, Mr Lu said, and he believed the movement should go beyond the annual commemorations.
"They have to abandon the bizarre rhetoric of begging the Communist party to redress the June 4th massacre."
The three men were charged for "counterrevolutionary sabotage" and "counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement" in August 1989. Yu Dongyue, Mr Lu, and Yu Zhijian were sentenced to 20 years, 16 years and life imprisonment respectively.
In 1998, Mr Lu and Yu Zhijian were paroled, but Yu Dongyue was not released until February 2006.
At their Washington meeting, Yu Zhijian said Yu Dongyue (41), was subjected to long periods of solitary confinement and torture, including frequent beatings with electric batons, forced drinking of his urine and sleep deprivation.
The China of 20 years ago is very different from that of today. Market-driven reforms have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty and transformed the country into the world's third-largest economy.
The 1989 killings severely bruised relations between Washington and Beijing, and there were echoes of those tensions on the eve of the anniversary.
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," Ms Clinton said in a statement.
The demands reflect views Washington has long held but represent a tougher stance on China's human rights record than Ms Clinton has taken in her first four months in the job.
In a sign of Beijing's mix of confidence and caution, the square was open to visitors on Thursday, but with hundreds of police and guards present. On the 10th anniversary of the crackdown in 1999, it was closed to the public.
Chinese crowded the square to watch the dawn flag-raising ceremony that is now a fixture of official patriotic ritual. Many were visitors from outside Beijing and appeared oblivious to the sensitive date. There were no gestures of protest.
A Reuters photographer was stopped from taking pictures and told to erase those he had taken.
Authorities blocked access to popular Internet services Twitter, online photo sharing service Flickr, as well as briefly to email provider Hotmail. Foreign newscasts about the anniversary have been cut.
"The leaders would rather just avoid this topic," said Zhang Boshu, a philosopher in Beijing who has urged a public reckoning with the killings. "They know that the 1989 crackdown, shooting their own citizens, was a terrible blow to their legitimacy."
Dissidents have been detained or harassed, including Zeng Jinyan, wife of detained Aids activist Hu Jia, prompting anger from rights groups. Mothers of some of the dead were prevented from leaving their homes to commemorate their children.
Thousands of people in Hong Kong are expected to attend a candlelight vigil to commemorate the victims, as they do every year, and in Taiwan activists will likewise mark the anniversary.
While mention of the crackdown is taboo in Chinese media, dissidents have again been trying to get the government to reassess its official verdict on the incident, which is that it was a counter-revolutionary plot.
"The basic facts of what happened at that time have not changed. The nature of this tragedy has not changed either. It remains a bloody massacre of peaceful civilians," the Tiananmen Mothers, who campaign for a full accounting of June 4th, said in an open letter last week.
This year's anniversary comes as the economy is slowing on the back of the global financial crisis, eliminating jobs especially in export-dependent coastal regions and making it harder for new graduates to find work.
The government has reacted quickly to the crisis, unveiling a 4 trillion yuan stimulus package and a series of other measures to tackle rising joblessness.
Reuters