Xi Jinping urged to ‘re-evaluate’ Tiananmen crackdown in letter from victims’ families

Families of Chinese democracy protesters killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown have urged President Xi Jinping to acknowledge their suffering and “re-evaluate the June Fourth massacre” as its 29th anniversary approaches.

Open discussion of the crackdown is forbidden in China, where hundreds – by some estimates more than a thousand – died when the Communist Party sent tanks to crush demonstrations in the square in Beijing on June 4, 1989, after student-led protesters had staged a peaceful seven-week sit-in to demand democratic reforms.

In an open letter to Xi dated “the eve of 2018 June 4th”, the Tiananmen Mothers, an association of parents who lost children in the violence, said: “Each year when we would commemorate our loved ones, we are all monitored, put under surveillance, or forced to travel.

“No one from the successive governments over the past 29 years has ever asked after us, and not one word of apology has been spoken from anyone, as if the massacre that shocked the world never happened,” said the letter, which was released on Thursday by the non-profit Human Rights in China.