By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, June 3: Tibetan exiles will mark the 19th anniversary of the infamous Tiananmen Square Massacre on Wednesday, June 4, by organising a candle light screening of “Tiananmen: The Gate of the Heavenly Peace” documentary here.
The screening will start at 7:00pm at the Main Tibetan Temple (Tsuglagkhang).
In a leaflet circulated in the McLeod Ganj, a residential town largely of Tibetan refugees in upper Dharamsala, the organisers wrote – “June 4 is to China what March 10 is to Tibet.”
The anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre has been marked in Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan Government-in-exile in northern India, for several years with the screening of the documentary film. “This year watching it is more important,” the organisers wrote in the leaflet.
Even after 19 years, Chinese Communist authorities are still holding about 130 activists from the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, Human Rights Watch said in its press release yesterday.
The New York-based rights body called on the Chinese government to free them on the 19th anniversary of the crackdown that falls on June 4.
“On the 19th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the Chinese government should honor its commitment to improve human rights before the 2008 Beijing Olympics by releasing the estimated 130 Tiananmen prisoners improperly arrested or tried,”, HRW said in its statement.
The group said China should honor its pledge to improve human rights by releasing the prisoners before the Beijing Olympics in August when the square will be used for functions.
Chinese army troops, backed by tanks, initiated a massacre of an estimated 2,000 unarmed pro-democracy activists in and around Tiananmen Square and in other Chinese cities on and after June 3-4, according to Human Rights Watch.
“The Chinese government has wholly failed to account for those killings and bring justice to the victims today,” the rights group added.
The group said the victims included students, plus some workers, academics, writers and journalists, demonstrating peacefully for a pluralistic political system and that the death toll included the slaughter of hundreds of ordinary Chinese who massed in the streets of Beijing to stop the army from reaching Tiananmen Square.
The group also said the 1989 crackdown resulted in the arrest of hundreds of people on charges ranging from “counterrevolutionary” offenses to “hooliganism,” including robbery, arson and assault.
According to the group, “China was globally condemned for its crackdown on the protesters, and several states imposed sanctions, including the ongoing European Union arms embargo. In 1990, however, then-President Jiang Zemin dismissed international condemnation of the Tiananmen Massacre as “much ado about nothing”, according to HRW’s statement.
“The government continues to harass survivors, their families, and those who dare to challenge the official version of the events at Tiananmen Square. Current figures are not made public, but as recently as 2004, at least 130 individuals arrested in the wake of the June 3-4 massacre were still in prison,” HRW’s press statement released on Monday said.
The group called on the Chinese government to issue a complete list of those who died or were injured, and those who were imprisoned, as no such lists are publicly available.
“The Chinese government wants the 2008 Beijing Games to expunge the memories of the 1989 Beijing massacre,” said Richardson. “China could replace the image of the lone man blocking the tanks with the image of the Tiananmen prisoners being freed – a truly Olympian gesture.”
Click here to read HRW’s Press Release
