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Purged Chinese Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang, centre, addressing students in May 1989 at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Photo: AFP

Tiananmen anniversary prompts raised security at Zhao Ziyang’s family home

  • Late Communist Party leader’s friends and relatives face heightened police checks before paying their respects as part of traditional festival
  • Security tighter than previous years

Police surveillance around the late Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang’s family residence was tightened on Friday, as friends and relatives paid tribute to the purged Communist Party leader on China’s tomb sweeping day, ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen student-led protests.

The annual Ching Ming Festival, as the day is known, is traditionally a time for paying respects to the departed.

All visitors to the Zhao family home had to go through police and security checks and were only allowed in after they had been personally greeted by family members outside the courtyard home in Beijing.

“Police security is tighter this year [than in previous years]. The monitoring area stretches from the hutongs (alleys) around our home to the main road,” said Wang Yannan, Zhao's daughter, on Friday.

Zhao Ziyang’s daughter Wang Yannan at the family residence in Beijing, where relatives and friends of the late party chief who gathered to pay their respects were met with increased security. Photo: Kimmy Chung

She suggested this year’s 30th anniversary of the student-led movement was probably one of the factors behind the tightened security.

“Fewer people would come for the remembrance … but it may get stricter in the future if this trend continues,” she said.

Zhao, who was purged for siding with the students in 1989, spent the last 15 years of his life under house arrest. He died on January 17, 2005.

The Communist Party has branded the student-led movement a rebellion and barred any public commemoration.

On Friday, Zhao’s family decorated the room of the former party boss with floral wreaths and pictures of him and his late wife Liang Boqi.

Friends and relatives pay their respects to the late Zhao Ziyang, the former Chinese Chinese Communist Party leader who was purged following his support for students in the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989. Photo: Kimmy Chung

Visitors were invited to share their thoughts about him in a memorial book.

Among them was Li Sui, daughter of Li Ziyuan, former provincial party secretary of Sichuan, who had worked with Zhao in the southwestern province in the late 1970s.

“We were neighbours and the couple looked after us when we were small,” Li said. “Justice lies in the heart of everyone. The authorities should have vindicated the movement a long time ago.”

Hu Xinhua, an old friend of Zhao’s who comes every year, said: “Uncle Zhao was very humble and knowledgeable, who truly dedicated his life for the ordinary people.”

Meanwhile, some members of the Tiananmen Mothers group, formed by the parents of some of the victims in the 1989 crackdown, held their commemorations before the festival to avoid monitoring and harassment by police.

Zhang Xianling, one of the support group founders who wanted to visit her lost son’s grave on Friday, told the South China Morning Post that she was escorted to the cemetery by three policemen but dropped her plans due to heavy traffic.

“Thirty years have passed – long enough for a baby to grow up and become a parent. But the incident has not been resolved yet,” she said.

“I feel very sad for sure. It shows that the authorities have no confidence at all.”

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This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Tight surveillance as visitors pay tribute to Zhao Ziyang
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