U.S. lashes Beijing on Tiananmen anniversary

The Obama administration Wednesday issued its harshest criticism of China’s human rights record since taking office, accusing Beijing of trying to “hide” the Tiananmen Square massacre on its 20th anniversary and demanding a “public accounting” of those killed and missing in the crackdown.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom activists accused of downplaying human rights during her visit to Beijing in February, called for the release of all of those still imprisoned for participating in the protests and for “dialogue” between the government and relatives of the victims.

“A China that has made enormous progress economically, and that 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,” Mrs. Clinton said in a statement.

In public remarks, however, she and other top administration officials had little to say. President Obama was in the Middle East, and Mrs. Clinton, just back from a Latin American summit, was flying to join the president in Cairo.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington had no immediate reaction to Mrs. Clinton’s remarks.

Visitors were allowed into Tiananmen Square on Thursday morning amid a heavy police presence. It was a contrast to the 10th anniversary of the crackdown, when the square was completely closed.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Beijing and other Chinese cities in the late spring of 1989 after the death of reformist leader Hu Yaobang. The demonstrations grew into the largest and loudest call for democracy in China since the founding of the communist government in 1949.

Chinese troops moved on demonstrators on the night of June 3, turning what witnesses described as a celebratory, almost carnival-style occasion into a night of horror.

As people in the square began dropping one by one, Chinese troops pursued fleeing demonstrators down side streets, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands. An iconic image of the time showed a young man trying to block a tank from advancing.

China says 241 people died and that it responded to restore order to the capital’s central square after weeks of chaotic protests. Chinese officials note the enormous strides the country has made in terms of economic progress and say that Chinese are far freer in terms of their individual lives than at any other time in 60 years.

However, the government still routinely arrests political dissidents and took no chances about protests on this year’s anniversary. Chinese authorities blanketed the streets surrounding Tiananmen with police vans, banned foreign reporters and photographers, blocked Twitter and other Internet services and sent police and paramilitary forces into the square.

“They are trying everything they can do to block information, to censor, to look for any potential threat,” said Wang Dan, a top student leader of the protests who spent seven years in jail.

But Mr. Wang said the Chinese government eventually will have to face the past.

“Technically, I don’t think they can achieve their goal completely. For example, even myself can have my personal blog inside China for almost half a year and the government never knew that. The government just recently shut me down, but I can use another fake name to open a new one,” Mr. Wang said at a seminar this week sponsored by the Heritage Foundation.

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