Author: Associated Press
Publication: NDTV.com
Date: June 4, 2011
URL: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/tiananmen-anniversary-brings-new-china-detentions-110152?pfrom=home-World
Chinese security forces rounded up more government
critics ahead of Saturday's anniversary of the crushing of the 1989 pro-democracy
movement centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, adding to an already harsh
crackdown on dissent, activists said.
Stricter measures against dissidents are routine
on the June 4 anniversary, but this year coincide with the most sweeping suppression
campaign in many years. Hundreds of activists, lawyers and bloggers have been
questioned, detained or simply disappeared in the four-month campaign that
aims to quash even the possibility of a pro-democracy movement forming along
the lines of those sweeping the Arab world.
Bao Tong, a former aide to the late liberal
Communist Party secretary Zhao Ziyang, was taken to an unknown location by
security officers this week along with his wife, according to Chinese Human
Rights Defenders, a group that publicizes information on dissidents collected
from sources within China.
Bao served a prison sentence following the
military crackdown, while Zhao, his former boss, was deposed for sympathizing
with the protesters and lived out his life under house arrest in Beijing.
Calls to Bao's home rang unanswered on Saturday.
Ding Zilin, who founded a group for people
whose children were killed in the crackdown, was placed under house arrest
while a number of former activists in the student-led protest movement were
taken from their homes or told not to go out, the group said.
Chen Ziming, whose liberal think tank sought to mediate between the students
and Communist Party leaders, was told he would not be permitted to leave home
before June 10, the Hong Kong based Information Center for Human Rights and
Democracy said.
A number of other activists have been warned
not to leave home, issue statements, or speak to media, according to the two
groups.
As usual, the anniversary was ignored by China's
entirely state-controlled media while Tiananmen Square in the heart of the
capital was open under heavy security.
Twenty-two years later, few young Chinese
remember the events that marked the last popular challenge to communist rule
in the country. The decades since have seen the economy boom and the Communist
Party relinquish much of its day-to-day control over many areas of society
while still making no significant moves toward changing the one-party authoritarian
political system.
The Chinese government has never fully disclosed
what happened when the military crushed the weeks-long Tiananmen protests,
which it branded a "counterrevolutionary riot." Hundreds, possibly
more, were killed when troops backed with tanks fought their way to the square
into central Beijing on the night of June 3-4.
In Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule
in 1997 but maintains its own British-style legal system, the anniversary
was being marked with a candlelight vigil with usually draws tens of thousands
of people.
In Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy
that China claims as its own territory, President Ma Ying-jeou issued a statement
calling on China to respect human rights, institute political reforms, release
imprisoned dissidents.