Only Beijing can heal people’s June 4 Tiananmen pain, says Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen

Taiwan’s new president has urged Beijing to give its people greater rights on the 27th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown against 1989 pro-democracy protests.

“As a president, I’m not finger-pointing at the political system on the mainland, but sincerely sharing the experience of the democratisation of Taiwan,” Tsai Ing-wen, who took up office in May, said on Saturday in her first statement about the crackdown.

“If the mainland could give the people more rights, the world would pay it more respect.”

She said it could be “seen by all eyes” that the Chinese people were having a higher standard of living while facing the pressure of political and social transformation.

The comments of Tsai, the island’s first female president, have come at a delicate time, with Beijing paying close attention to Taipei’s plans after Taiwanese voters elected their first president from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party in eight years.

Like Ma Ying-jeou – the island’s former president, who spoke on the issue every year during both of his four-year terms in office – Tsai also tried to look for positives between the two sides over the issue.

“Don’t let June 4th be the inconvenient truth between the two sides,” she wrote on her Facebook social media page on Saturday.

“Only the ruling party on the mainland can heal the past wounds and pain of the Chinese people.

“[I] hope the two sides will have the same ideas about democracy and human rights one day.”

Mainland troops used guns and tanks to crush the pro-democracy protests on June 4, 1989. The incident resulted in hundreds, perhaps more than 1,000 deaths, according to various sources.

Beijing has never apologised for the incident and has banned any public discussion on the mainland about the subject, despite repeated calls for it to do so by human rights groups.

All elected presidents of Taiwan since 2000 have spoken about the June 4 crackdown during their tenures.

Ma, who served as president from 2008 to 2016, referred to the crackdown every year on the anniversary.

“Were the mainland authorities to vindicate June 4, it would greatly shorten the mental distance between the two sides and add to the common grounds of cross-strait interactions,” Ma, known for his pro-reunification stance, said in June last year.