They were chasing us aggressively from the east toward the west,” he said. Suddenly we heard a big bang behind us and we saw a tank fire a tear gas canister towards us. “We knew people had been injured and died. They were walking west along an iron roadside fence. It was covered in other people’s blood.”įang, then a talented 23-year-old athlete from Beijing Sports College, left around 6 a.m. I was wearing a Peking University T-shirt. Shao said he tried to talk to a soldier on one tank, “but the soldier just raised his gun and aimed it at me. Thirty years on, emotions still run strong for the survivors. Activists and human rights lawyers are jailed high-tech digital surveillance keeps dissent in check. I think some people have now recognized that they created a monster - because China has now become a monster that will challenge the whole world.”Ĭhina’s ban on even the vaguest reference to the massacre signals that opposition or dissent is not tolerated. They had hope that with economic development, China would liberalize. “We were naive once, 30 years ago,” he said. Wang said the students, too, underestimated the government’s capacity for brutality. Those hopes have been dashed since President Xi Jinping’s sweeping human rights crackdown in recent years and his move to abolish term limits last year.Ĭhina officially elevates Xi Jinping to level of Mao » Eager to profit from China’s vast market, they counted on the Communist Party to loosen its tight political and social control, especially after joining the World Trade Organization. Wang and other dissidents believe Western leaders got China wrong after the crackdown. “By covering up the truth, they violate their promise to the people. “As citizens of China we have the right to know what happened,” said Wang, who was exiled to the United States in 1998.
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