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Nectar Gan

For 30 years, Maria has been haunted by what she saw in the small hours of June 4, 1989, as she hid behind a heavy metal gate near Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing.
She was in Beijing on a work trip at the time, and was curious about the student-led pro-democracy movement that had swept her country.
Maria, then 25, was visiting the protesters when word spread that the army’s tanks had arrived and soldiers were firing on the demonstrators. She then ran into a small building on Nanchizi Street, where she hid throughout the night along with dozens of others.
“I saw Beijing residents carrying injured students on flatbed trolleys, their white shirts soaked with blood,” she said. “I was terrified, and couldn’t stop shaking.”
On top of those memories, the 55-year-old has also long been tormented by a crushing guilt, for not being able to pay tribute to the hundreds – possibly more than 1,000 – killed in the bloody crackdown, until this year.
Maria joined more than a hundred others on Saturday to commemorate the approaching 30th anniversary of the bloodshed with a candlelight vigil in the rose garden outside the Chinese embassy in Washington.
It was the biggest turnout in recent years for the event, which is organised by the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars, a group founded in 1989 in response to the crackdown, to protect the interests of Chinese studying in the United States.

Many of those attending the 30th anniversary vigil were first-timers, like Maria.
Wei Jingsheng, a leading figure in the overseas Chinese dissidents community since his exile to the US in 1997 after serving 18 years in jail, said he was touched to see so many new faces in the crowd, “especially the younger people”.
“They’re the hope of China who can pass on the memory,” said the 69-year-old, who was still behind bars in 1989 for his leading role in the Democracy Wall movement of a decade earlier.

More than a decade ago, Wei said he felt great shame and disappointment as he watched the number of participants dwindle to just a couple of dozen.
“The US government had handed out so many ‘June 4 Green Cards’ back then, why were there so few people who would come out and commemorate?” he said, referring to the tens of thousands of US permanent residency permits granted to Chinese students after the crackdown under the 1992 Chinese Students Protection Act.
“Many people were afraid to show their faces, worried the Chinese Communist Party would come after them. But in recent years, more people have come out,” he said.
Maria is among those who have taken a long time to overcome their fear. Saturday’s vigil was her first commemoration since arriving in the US in 2012, and the first time she had confided the long-held secret of where she was, and what she saw on that night.
“I have long wanted to come to commemorate. But because I need to go back to China every year to see my old mother, I was afraid if I joined I would never be able to return,” she said, refusing to reveal her full name for the same reason.
But as the 30th anniversary neared, the regret was too much. Watching the speeches from a distance, she said: “I felt I had to pay my tribute to the students who died.”




Hannah Zuo, a 37-year-old mother of two, was another new participant who felt compelled to attend.
Like most Chinese people who were too young in 1989 to remember what happened – as well as those who were not yet born – Zuo had never heard of June 4 while she was in China. She only found out about the crackdown last year through a documentary, after moving to the US with her family in 2017.
“I was so shocked, so angry, so much in grief that I couldn’t sleep for the whole night,” she said.
“It was tough for me to find out that the Chinese Communist Party was so ruthless towards its own people … it is evil,” she said, cradling her barely two-month-old daughter in her arms while watching her 5-year-old son running around in the crowd.
“I will tell my children the truth as soon as they can understand it … and I’ll bring them here every year,” she said.


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Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen Square crackdown 30th anniversary

Washington Tiananmen vigil attracts first-timers for 30th anniversary

Outside the Chinese embassy in Washington, more than 100 people gathered to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 4, 1989. Photo: Nectar Gan

Wei Jingsheng, a leading figure in the overseas Chinese democracy movement, spoke about the fate of the movement 30 years on. 02JUN19 SCMP / Nectar Gan

Participants unfurled and stood behind large banners they had brought to the commemoration. 02JUN19 SCMP / Nectar Gan

30 years on from Tiananmen Square crackdown, why Beijing still thinks it got it right

Illustration: Adolfo Arranz

PEK01 : CHINA-WORKERS: PEKEING, 28 SEP 89 - Accompanied by Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin, senior Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (R) greets a meeting of "model workers" in the Great hall of the People September 28. Observers say Deng is backing Jiang as his possible successor. REUTERS

Crowds march to protest against the Tiananmen Square crackdown [June 4 massacre]. 4 Jun 1989.

A girl wounded during a clash between the army and students on June 4, 1989 near Tiananmen Square is carried out on a cart. On the night of June 3 to 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square sheltered the last pro-democracy supporters. Chinese troops forcibly marched on the square to end a weeks-long occupation by student protestors, using lethal force to remove opposition it encountered along the way. Hundreds of demonstrators were killed in the crackdown as tanks rolled into the environs of the square. / AFP PHOTO / MANUEL CENETA

Song writer and pro-democracy activist Hou dejian (R) with three other fellow dissidents, academic Liu Xiaobo (2nd from R), official at a computer company Zhou Duo (3rd from R) and editor Gao Xin (4th from R), talks to journalists in front of the Monument to People's Heroes on Tiananmen before begining their hunger strike during the pro-democracy student movement, June 2, 1989. REUTER

WAS91:DENG:BEIJING,21FEB97 - FILE PHOTO 16MAY89 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (L) raises his glass in a toast with Chinese senior leader Deng Xiaoping at a luncheon banquet at the Great Hall of the People during a summit between the two leaders May 16, 1989. The meeting took place less than a month before the crackdown on the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Deng died February 19 at the age of 92. cm/FLS-Photo by Ed Nachtrieb REUTERS

Chinese Communist Party (CPC) Secretary General Zhao Ziyang (C) addresses the student hunger strikers through a megaphone at dawn 19 May 1989 in one of the buses at Tiananmen Square in Beijing where pro-democracy hunger strikers had been sheltered. Zhao Ziyang pleaded in vain against using force to crack down on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square 04 June 1989, according to a document published 07 January 2001 by a Hong Kong-based human rights organization. The Information Centre on Human Rights and Democracy published a "self-criticism" speech made by Zhao to the Central Committee (CC) of the CPC 22 June 1989, in which he defended his policy of appeasing the students. "I was extremely worried that forceful measures, especially the use of weapons to solve the problem, would only lead to bleeding and a worsening of the situation among the vast majority of the population", Zhao said. After that CC meeting Zhao was officially removed from the helm of the CPC and replaced by Jiang Zemin, the

The occupied Tienanmen Square as seen from the roof of the Beijing Hotel. The image was taken with an 800mm focal length lens On June 5, 1989. Post Magazine, 02 SEPT 2012

TO GO WITH AFP STORY "China-politics-rights-Tiananmen" by Robert Saiget (FILES) This file photo taken on June 2, 1989 shows hundreds of thousands of Chinese gathering around a 10-metre replica of the Statue of Liberty (C), called the Goddess of Democracy, in Tiananmen Square demanding democracy despite martial law in Beijing. Families of those killed in the crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests on June 2, 2010 demanded China end its silence and open a dialogue on the bloodshed. In an annual open letter, 128 members of the Tiananmen Mothers castigated the Communist Party government for ignoring its calls for openness on the crackdown that occurred June 3-4, 1989 and vowed never to give up their fight. AFP PHOTO / FILES / CATHERINE HENRIETTE / AFP PHOTO / AFP FILES / CATHERINE HENRIETTE

President Bush exchanges a toast with Chairman Deng Xiaoping during a luncheon Sunday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Blood red anxiety: how Tiananmen coloured the world of Chinese artist Chen Guang

Artist Chen Guang reflects on the painting Blood Red Anxiety at his studio in Beijing. Photo: Mimi Lau

Former PLA Chen Guang was given the only camera in the army in 1989 to take photo records of how the soldiers cleared up the Tiananmen Square. The images had haunted him but he was not able to lay them on canvas until 20 years later in 2009. Chen finished a series of paintings by reconstructing the photographic images he captured. He featured mostly his army comrades, student-protesters and the aftermath of Tiananmen crackdown. UNDATED HANDOUT.

47-year-old artist Chen Guang in his studio home in Beijing. SCMP/ Mimi Lau

Generation Amnesia: why China’s youth don’t talk about Tiananmen

Censorship, silence and time have created a gulf between the young people who witnessed the Tiananmen crackdown 30 years ago and those who came after them.

FOR USE AS DESIRED--FILE--The portrait of Mao Tse-tung overlooking Tiananmen Square faces off a statue erected in the square May 30, 1989. The statue was dubbed "The Goddess of Democracy" by students from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, who modeled it after the Statue of Liberty. (AP Photo/Jeff Widener)

(FILES) Picture dated 14 May 1989shows student hunger strikers from Beijing University relaxing as several hundred students stage a huge demonstration at Tiananmen Square as they start an unlimited hunger strike as part of a mass pro-democracy protest against the Chinese government. The April-June1989 pro-democracy movement was crushed by Chinese troops in June 1989 when army tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square 04 June. AFP PHOTO

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Biggest turnout in years for candlelight commemoration outside Chinese embassy
For many, it is the first time they have spoken of the events of June 4, 1989


Biggest turnout in years for candlelight commemoration outside Chinese embassy and, for many, it is the first time they have spoken of the events of June 4, 1989.


Tiananmen Square crackdown

Washington Tiananmen vigil attracts first-timers for 30th anniversary

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}Biggest turnout in years for candlelight commemoration outside Chinese embassy For many, it is the first time they have spoken of the events of June 4, 1989

Biggest turnout in years for candlelight commemoration outside Chinese embassy

For many, it is the first time they have spoken of the events of June 4, 1989