Chinese activists detained ahead of 30th anniversary of Tiananmen crackdown

Chinese authorities have detained several activists ahead of the politically explosive 30th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing, rights groups said on Thursday.

Discussions of the 1989 Tiananmen protests and its military suppression are taboo in China, and authorities have rounded up or warned activists, lawyers and journalists ahead of the anniversary each year.

Internet censors also usually go into overdrive, and this year popular live-streaming sites are shutting down around the anniversary for “technical” reasons.

But this year’s attempts to mute public discourse are harsher than usual because Beijing has become increasingly intolerant of dissenting voices, according to Cao Yaxue, founder of the Washington-based rights group China Change.

Among the string of activists detained or “disappeared” are six artists who had put up a painting and performing art exhibition titled “A Conscience Movement” in the eastern city of Nanjing.

Liu Lijiao, the wife of the lead artist Zhu Hun, said she had not been able to contact her husband since Tuesday.

“Police came from Nanjing and raided my home in Beijing [on Wednesday],” Liu said. The two cities are over 1,000km (600 miles) apart.

Calls to the Nanjing Public Security Bureau went unanswered.

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Zhu Hun was also detained in 2014 for a performance art piece in support of democracy protests in Hong Kong against Beijing’s attempts to restrain freedoms in the semi-autonomous city.

Dissident writer Shen Liangqing was arrested for “picking quarrels” on May 16 and was being held in a detention centre in Hefei, the provincial capital of Anhui, Shen’s lawyer Liu Hao said.

“A group of unknown men grabbed Shen while he was walking his dog the night before, and put a black hood over his head, as if it was a kidnap attempt, but later the group showed their police IDs,” Liu Hao said.

Shen had been campaigning for democratic reforms for over three decades and served an 18-month jail term in 1992 for “inciting subversion”.

The Hefei city public security bureau referred inquiries to the local government propaganda office, which declined to comment.

Rights group China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) said it had documented the cases of three other individuals who were detained in May for posting photos or comments linked to the Tiananmen crackdown.

They include independent filmmaker Deng Chuanbin, who tweeted a photo of a liquor label that showed an illustrated rendition of “Tank Man”, the iconic photograph of a man facing down a column of armoured vehicles in 1989.

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Deng was arrested on May 17 and police warned his family not to hire a lawyer, the rights group said in a statement.

The arrest could not be independently confirmed.

Four activists in southwestern China were handed prison sentences for selling liquor with the labels, that also read: “Always remember June 4th, 1989”.

The Communist Party has adopted a heavy-handed approach to dealing with student activists, labour movements and rights lawyers in recent years and since President Xi Jinping took its reins.

Asked if the People’s Liberation Army planned any commemoration on June 4, defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian said on Thursday: “I do not agree with you for using the word ‘suppression’. I think these past 30 years, the stable process of China’s reform and development and the achievements that have been made are an answer to this question.”