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SCMP Reporter

A former top aide to Zhao Ziyang, the late leader of the Communist Party of China whose ashes were interred on Friday, 14 years after his death, said on Tuesday he had been allowed to visit the grave to pay his last respects.
“I was approved to sweep the tomb of Ziyang and [his wife Liang] Boqi,” 87-year-old Bao Tong said on Twitter.
“As Yannan [Zhao’s daughter] said, they were finally free and appeased. I hope they find freedom and peace in heaven,” he said.
“I wish my Chinese people are all able to obtain freedom and peace in the human world.”

Zhao’s ashes were interred alongside Liang, who died in 2013, in a low-key ceremony at a cemetery on the northern outskirts of Beijing.
A former general secretary of the Communist Party, Zhao was ousted in 1989 for “splitting the party” by sympathising with pro-democracy student protesters and opposing the crackdown in Tiananmen Square. He spent the rest of his life under virtual house arrest and died in 2005 at the age of 85.




Bao, who in 1989 was one of the 175 members of the party’s powerful Central Committee, was arrested days before the military crackdown on June 4 amid a massive purge of party cadres who sympathised with the movement.
As one of Zhao’s top aides, he was expelled from the party and sentenced to seven years in prison for leaking state secrets. He was the most senior Communist Party official jailed in 1989.
Bao was released in 1996 but has been under house arrest in Beijing ever since.
According to video footage shared on Twitter, Bao was accompanied on his visit to the cemetery by a small group, including Zhao’s daughter. At the graveside he bowed three times and though aided by a walking stick declined an offer to sit down.
“I can stand. I should stand,” he said. “This place is a restricted area, but it is a sacred land, a sacred land for ever.”


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Former aide to late Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang pays his final respects

Bao Tong pays his last respects at the grave of former Communist Party of China boss Zhao Ziyang. Photo: Handout

Bao Tong had been allowed to visit Zhao Ziyang grave to pay his last respects in Beijing. 22OCT19. HANDOUT PHOTO

Low-key ceremony as Zhao Ziyang, who opposed Tiananmen crackdown, finally laid to rest

The family of Zhao Ziyang and his wife Liang Boqi pay their respects at the grave where their ashes were interred on Friday. Photo: Simon Song

The private cemetery in northern outskirts of Beijing where late Communist Party general secretary Zhao Ziyang laid to rest on October 18, 2019. 18OCT19 SCMP / Simon Song

(FILES) Chinese Communist Party (CPC) Secretary General Zhao Ziyang (C) addresses the student hunger strikers through a megaphone at dawn 19 May 1989 in one of the buses at Tiananmen Square in Beijing where pro-democracy hunger strikers had been sheltered. Zhao Ziyang has been hospitalised and is in a "stable" condition, the foreign ministry said 11 January 2005. AFP PHOTO

FFN35C Washington, District of Columbia, USA. 8th Jan, 2010. United States President Ronald Reagan walks Premier Zhao Ziyang of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) to his car following a plenary session in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC on Tuesday, January 10, 1984.Mandatory Credit: Mary Anne Fackelman - White House via CNP © Mary Anne Fackelman/CNP/ZUMA Wire/Alamy Live News

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Anthony Suau, left, Charlie Cole, center and Steve Gardner, right, take a break during protests over South KoreaÕs democracy movement of 1987 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photograph © Kim Newton 2019)

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Charlie Cole, right and James Nachtwey, left, photograph South Korean democracy during South KoreaÕs first free election campaign in 1987. (Photograph © Kim Newton 2019)

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China

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Communist Party boss, whose ashes were interred on Friday, ‘finally free and appeased’, 87-year-old Bao Tong says on Twitter
‘I wish my Chinese people are all able to obtain freedom and peace in the human world,’ he says



Communist Party boss, whose ashes were interred on Friday, ‘finally free and appeased’, 87-year-old Bao Tong says on Twitter.
