Beijing, China — Checkpoints and lines of police vehicles lined a main road leading to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square as China stepped up security on the 35th anniversary of a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests.
China has long silenced any memory of the killings, as the Chinese government ordered the military to end months-long protests and defend communist rule. An estimated 180,000 soldiers and armed police arrived with tanks and armored vehicles and fired into the crowds as they advanced toward Tiananmen Square.
The death toll remains unknown to this day. Hundreds, if not thousands, are believed to have died in an operation that began on the night of June 3 and continued into the following morning.
Across China, the event remains a sensitive and taboo topic that is heavily censored, with any mention or reference on social media deleted.
City life passed practically normally. Hundreds of tourists lined the streets leading to the entrance gates to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Those who lost their relatives during the repression are prevented from meeting or mourning in public.
When asked by a foreign journalist for comment on the 35th anniversary during a daily Foreign Ministry briefing on Monday, spokesman Mao Ning downplayed the event.
“The Chinese government has long come to a clear conclusion about the political unrest 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 was the site of an annual vigil to mark the anniversary, less than a week after police arrested eight more people than social media posts commemorating the repression under Hong Kong’s new 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.
Still, some residents have chosen to remember the bloody event privately, including running 6.4 kilometers (4 miles) on Monday (a reference to the June 4 date) and sharing Tiananmen-related content on social media.
Over the past week, city authorities have stepped up efforts to erase reminders of the 1989 crackdown. Several pro-democracy activists told the Associated Press that police had asked about their plans for Tuesday.
On Monday, Police also briefly detained a performance artist. on a street in Causeway Bay, a busy shopping district in Hong Kong, near the park that held the vigil.
An independent bookstore, which displayed “35/5” in its window – an indirect 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, during which he recorded the clients’ identity data.
Commemorative events have grown abroad as China cracks down on Tiananmen memorials in Hong Kong and the mainland. This year, vigils are being planned in Washington DC, London, Brisbane and Taipei, among other cities, and a growing number of talks, rallies, exhibitions and plays have emerged on the topic.
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