30 years after Tiananmen Square, China still restricting freedoms
Yan Xiong, who was a student leader at the 1989 demonstrations, sees Chinese people increasingly becoming disillusioned. Authorities have arrested pastors and placed more than 1 million Uighur Muslims into internment camps.
(The Christian Science Monitor) In June 1989 Yan Xiong, an idealistic Beijing University law student, helped lead demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, watching in awe as the crowds swelled.
“Even after 30 years, the number one impression in my mind is the millions of people,” Xiong said. “The whole society supported that democratic movement.”
Protests calling for free speech, press freedom, and democratic reforms had engulfed Tiananmen Square—the symbolic center of power in the capital, Beijing—then spread to dozens of major cities nationwide. But after several weeks, Communist Party hard-liners prevailed over reformers. Troops with tanks pushed into the capital, opening fire with machine guns on civilians. Estimates of the number killed range from hundreds to several thousand.
