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With the Olympic torch relay in China heralding the beginning of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the Chinese government faces daunting challenges in the wake of recent events, including ethnic minority independence protests, terrorism, and the international community?s threat to boycott the opening ceremony. With its official slogan for the Olympic Games, “One World, One Dream,” the Chinese government has aimed at emerging as a global powerhouse through the games. But ominous clouds have begun to gather over the Chinese government’s ambitions. Tight Security in Tiananmen Square The Chinese government has increased security in Tiananmen Square where the Olympic flame...

A young clerk with no knowledge of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown allowed a tribute to victims slip into the classified ads page of a newspaper in southwest China, a Hong Kong daily reported on Wednesday. The tiny ad in the lower right corner of page 14 of the Chengdu Evening News on Monday night, read: "Paying tribute to the strong(-willed) mothers of June 4 victims". An investigation was launched by Chinese authorities to find out how the advertisement slipped its way past censors. Public discussion of the massacre is still taboo in Beijing and the government has rejected calls...

One man with courage makes a majority. ~Andrew Jackson

BEIJING - A man threw a burning object at a portrait of Mao Zedong that hangs over Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, slightly damaging it and prompting police to close the nearby imperial palace, a news report said Sunday. The man, identified as Gu Hai'ou, from the northwestern city of Urumqi, tried to burn the portrait of communist China's first leader on Saturday afternoon, the Xinhua News Agency said. Early Sunday, authorities replaced the portrait, which had a small scorch mark in the lower left corner. "Armed police are guarding the area and visitors are forbidden to enter the Forbidden...

Minghui.net reports that on February 9, 2007, tourists witnessed a group of policemen suddenly attack a person sitting on the grass by Tiananmen Square. The attack lasted only a few minutes time. When it was over there was a large pool of blood left on the ground where the beating took place. The tourist who reported the attack arrived in Tiananmen Square at around noon with two of his friends. On the other side of the square was a man sitting on the grass. He was sitting motionless. Suddenly, several policemen ran up to him and surrounded him. The police...

THE US today urged China to account for thousands killed, arrested and missing in the Tiananmen Square crackdown on democratic protesters 17 years ago, saying a reevaluation is "long overdue". "Seventeen years ago, beginning on the night of June 3 and continuing June 4, 1989, the Chinese government brutally suppressed peaceful demonstrations by its own citizens who were supporting political reform and democracy," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement. "The US urges China to provide a full accounting of the thousands who were killed, detained, or went missing and of the government's role in the massacre." Mr...

The United States marked the 17th anniversary of China's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square on Sunday by urging Beijing to re-evaluate its actions. China's government has stood by the suppression of what it has called "counterrevolutionary" riots, saying it preserved social stability and paved the way for economic growth. "The U.S. urges China to provide a full accounting of the thousands who were killed, detained or went missing and of the government's role in the massacre," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement. "We also urge China to address the ongoing violations of the rights...

Now that Cindy Sheehan turns out to be a disaster for the antiwar movement -- most Americans are not about to follow a left-wing radical who insists that we are in Iraq for reasons of theft, oppression and empire -- a new spokesman is needed. If I were in the opposition camp, I would want a deeply patriotic, highly intelligent, distinguished establishment figure. I would want Brent Scowcroft. Scowcroft has been obliging. In the Oct. 31 New Yorker he came out strongly against the war and the neocon sorcerers who magically foisted it upon what must have been a hypnotized...

In the first known case of its kind, the Chinese authorities have paid compensation to the mother of a teenager who was killed in the crackdown following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Tang Deying, a resident of the south-western city of Chengdu, has received $11,500 for the loss of her son Zhou Guocong. Fifteen-year-old Zhou was brought in by Chengdu police, two days after the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement started, and apparently died after severe beatings. Although he was cremated by the authorities, photos of his body later emerged and have been shown on the Internet.

After all others had been silenced, his lonely act of defiance against the Chinese regime catalyzed the world. What became of him? And 17 years later, has China succeeded in erasing this event from its history? On June 5, 1989, one day after the Chinese army's deadly crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, a single, unarmed young man stood his ground before a column of tanks on the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Captured on film and video by Western journalists, this extraordinary confrontation became an icon of the struggle for freedom around the world. Seventeen years later,...

French protests 'Tiananmen' Washington - United States television networks on Tuesday carried widespread coverage of demonstrations in France against a controversial new youth labour law, with CNN comparing the unrest to the Tiananmen Square uprising. Several news networks, including CNN and Fox News, cut away from a live broadcast of a news conference with US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld to show images of French riot police using water cannons to disperse demonstrators in Paris. CNN anchor Kyra Phillips said that images of protesters defiantly standing in front of the water cannons brought back memories of pro-democracy activists who...

China CrackingBy Frederick W. Stakelbeck Jr.FrontPageMagazine.com | December 21, 2005 In what is believed to be the deadliest confrontation since the murderous Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, police opened fire last week on a group of protesters in the coastal village of Dongzhou in the southern province of Guangdong, killing three people and wounding 10 others. Some local residents claim that dozens of protestors were killed and scores more wounded. Chinese riot police now patrol the village reinforced by police units from the nearby city of Shanwei. After a series of initial denials and an unexplained delay of four days,...

The forced appropriation of farmers' land by the municipal authorities of Shanwei City, Guangdong Province has incited a mass protest by the residents. The land appropriation was conducted in order to build a power plant. The local authorities suppressed the protest using thousands of armed police who reportedly shot the protesters using submachine guns and tanks. Dozens are believed to have died. This latest attack on its own people by the Chinese government reminds the West of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and has drawn serious attention globally. On December 10, the official state media finally broke the silence...

IMAGINE WHAT would have happened if during the 1980s an American communications company had provided information that allowed the South African government to track down and imprison an anti-apartheid activist. That is pretty much the moral equivalent of what Yahoo has just done in China in the case of journalist Shi Tao. And the California-based Web giant deserves the same kind of public opprobrium that would have fallen on any Western firm that dared to publicly cooperate with the enforcers of apartheid. Shi, the victim of Yahoo's shameful behavior, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for "illegally sending state...

HONG KONG: Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents were set to hold a candlelight vigil Saturday to mark the 16th anniversary of China's bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations. In Beijing, security was tight and there were no signs of public commemorations on the giant square, where 1989 student-led protests that ended when soldiers and tanks attacked, killing hundreds of people. China's Communist Party has eased many of the social controls that spurred the student-led Tiananmen protests, but still crushes protests against the event -- or any activity that it worries might threaten its monopoly on power....

Tens of thousands of people have gathered in Hong Kong to remember those killed in Beijing 16 years ago by Chinese troops as they crushed the Tiananmen Square uprising. A crowd that organisers estimated at 45,000 chanted "Vindicate the 1989 democracy movement", "Release all political dissidents" and "End one party rule," at the annual rally in in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Lee Cheuk-yan, a pro-democracy politician and key organiser of the rally, said the event was a success, despite the estimated attendance figures being 50 per cent down on last year. He said:...

BEIJING - China tightened security around Tiananmen Square on Saturday to prevent memorials on the anniversary of the bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. But in Hong Kong, tens of thousands of protesters staged a candlelight rally. In Sydney, Australia, a Chinese diplomat who is seeking asylum emerged from hiding to address a memorial rally. Tiananmen Square, the symbolic political heart of China, was open to the public. But extra carloads of police watched tourists on the vast plaza, where weeks of student-led demonstrations that drew tens of thousands ended in a military attack 16 years ago Saturday. Troops killed...

Amid all the admiration and fear of China's emergence as a modern industrial power, it is easy to forget how old fashioned are the country's politics. China may have embraced capitalism, globalisation and free trade, but its 1.3bn inhabitants are still ruled by a secretive Communist dictatorship. There are two related reasons for remembering this today. First, June 4 is the anniversary of the day in 1989 when party leaders launched a violent assault on the pro-democracy movement centred on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds of young protesters. Second, the party has recently begun a new campaign against freedom of...

June 3, 2005 is the sixteenth anniversary of the brutal 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre of peaceful pro-democracy protestors by the communist Chinese Government. Many Americans remember the infamous photo of the unarmed Chinese student standing in front of a column of armored tanks, blocking their path. What most Americans did not see were the color photos of smashed and bloody bodies of protestors all over the ground, making the ground look somewhat like the top of a giant pizza. The following are links to the encyclopedia entry for "Tiananmen Square", which is also provided below: http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/t/tiananme.asp http://www.encyclopedia.com/printable.asp?url=/ssi/t/tiananme.html The following...

A JOURNALIST considered to be the doyen of China correspondents has been detained in Beijing and could be charged with stealing state secrets after he tried to obtain a copy of interviews with a Communist leader purged after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong national who works for The Straits Times, a Singaporean newspaper, would be the first reporter for a foreign publication to be charged in China. Mary Lau, his wife, said: “He told me that he expected to be shut up for a long time. It seems they suspect him of stealing state secrets.” Mr...

"Since June Fourth, the Chinese government has talked constantly about respecting its citizens' "right to exist." Yet five years ago [sixteen now] guns and tanks deprived countless outstanding young Chinese men and women of their "right to exist" in a single night. This is nothing but hypocrisy.          As the mother of a victim, there is no way for me to forget these boys and girls and men and women, including my own son, who died in pools of blood. I want the people of the world to know that they once lived in this world, that this world once belonged...

No matter how hard the Chinese Communist Party has tried to erase the tragic events that took place on June 4, 1989, they are and will forever remain part of a history they have yet to face. With the sixteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre approaching, I decided to reproduce a few selections from various sources. Unfortunately, there aren't any online references to link to. So, I have reproduced excerpts from the original publications for use here on The Horses Mouth. The first selection was written by Yang Jianli, a former doctoral student in mathematics at the University of...

BEIJING (AFP) - More than 100 relatives of people killed in the Tiananmen massacre have called on the government to apologize as the 16th anniversary of the tragedy approaches. In an open letter by 125 relatives to President Hu Jintao, the Tiananmen Mothers group said the government's recent accusations against Japan for failing to acknowledge its World War II atrocities were meaningless because it has not apologized for its own transgressions. "You and your predecessors have wiped the memory of the June 4 massacre from the books and have covered up this despicable event from history," the letter said....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives Armed Services Committee has recommended barring the Pentagon from purchasing goods or services for five years from foreign companies that sell advanced weapons to China. The panel wants to use carrots and sticks to head off arms exports to China, it said in a report made available on Monday to accompany legislation it adopted last week. The provision in the 2006 defense authorization bill would encourage foreign companies "to maintain their ability to sell goods and services to the Department of Defense," it said. China's military modernization now "exceeds its legitimate security needs,"...

* Says European Union’s move to resume weapons sales to China threatens to upset the balance of power in the Pacific BEIJING: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested on Sunday that European governments are irresponsible if they sell sophisticated weaponry to China that might one day be used against US forces in the Pacific. “It is the United States, not Europe, that is defending the Pacific,” Rice said. She spoke in Seoul, the penultimate stop on her weeklong tour of Asia. South Korea, Japan and the United States are all Pacific powers and all contribute resources to keep the...

BEIJING - China kept a close eye on dissidents Sunday, a sign of the government's unease over potentially widespread mourning over the death of ousted Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang, who fell from power for sympathizing with pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989. Zhao, who died Jan. 17, was cremated Saturday at the main burial site for revolutionary heroes after a tightly controlled memorial service - below a state funeral in status - where only guests approved by the government were allowed. Activists were banned from attending the service and were watched over by security agents guarding their homes and tapping their...

Canadian Conservative MP honors Chinese reformer By BRIAN LAGHI Saturday, January 22, 2005 - Page A4 BEIJING -- Chinese authorities allowed a Canadian MP to express his sympathies outside the home of one of the country's well-known political reformers yesterday, making him what officials said was one of the first foreigners to do so. Jason Kenney negotiated with Chinese police for several minutes before a former aide of Zhao Ziyang emerged to escort Mr. Kenney to the front of the home where the former premier had lived under house arrest for the past 15 years. Mr. Zhao died in hospital...

"Give me democracy or give me death!" read a banner waved by the students who occupied Tiananmen Square, China's political heart, 15 years ago. Students were very much the driving force behind the demonstrations, and elite establishments like Peking University and Tsinghua University were convulsed with activity, organising hunger strikes and marches. Now the campuses are calm and some are empty - their students gone home for Chinese New Year holidays, conveniently out of the way when one of the heroes of the pro-democracy movement, Zhao Ziyang, died in a Beijing hospital on Monday. Some students posted notes on the...

Ailing Chinese Leader's Condition Kept Mum By ALEXA OLESEN ASSOCIATED PRESS BEIJING (AP) - Zhao Ziyang, a Chinese leader purged for his support of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, remained in a deep coma Sunday, according to a human rights activist in contact with his family, but state media did not disclose the ailing leader's condition to the Chinese public. In a report put out by the official Xinhua News Agency in English for foreign audiences, the government said Zhao's condition had stabilized. The 85-year-old former Chinese premier went into shock from a lung ailment and fell into a...

...Vladimir Putin... has again exhibited his contempt for democratic rule and his tin ear for the angry opposition in the world's democracies.... Ukraine was starved into submission by Stalin 72 years ago, but when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence. It was not, however, an independence willingly accepted by Russian hardliners.... The massive outpouring of demonstrators in what they call the "Orange Revolution" is an attempt to replicate the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia... Serbia... the Berlin Wall, the "Velvet Revolution" in Czechoslovakia and the Solidarity victory in Poland. There was one significant failure too,...

France's President Jacques Chirac declared the Chinese Army's massacre of Tiananmen democracy demonstrators an event in the past as he began a visit here designed to reap lucrative contracts for France's financially pressed state industrial enterprises. The massacre in 1989 was "another time" he said during an interview with the Chinese Government news agency Xinhua, explaining his call for a lifting of the European Union's arms export embargo on China, imposed after Tiananmen. The remark brought immediate protests. The New York-based group Human Rights in China, founded by exiles from the suppressed 1980s democracy movement, said that "15 short years"...

John Kerry gave a fire-breathing speech at Temple University in Philadelphia on Friday. In it he announced what will be his themes for the balance of the campaign, subject of course to 180-degree changes at any time. There was one problem with the speech. It was largely “fact-free,” as Dave Barry is wont to say. Here are the claims, and the relevant facts to each claim: “The invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against our greatest enemy -- Al Qaeda -- ...” Kerry may not have noticed, but your average college student ought to know that...

Hero of SARS Crisis Detained Since June 1 BEIJING -- Chinese military and security officials are forcing the elderly physician who exposed the government's coverup of the SARS epidemic to attend intense indoctrination classes and are interrogating him about a letter he wrote in February denouncing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, according to sources familiar with the situation. The officials have detained Jiang Yanyong, 72, a semi-retired surgeon in the People's Liberation Army, in a room under 24-hour supervision, and they have threatened to keep him until he "changes his thinking" and "raises his level of understanding" about the Tiananmen...

DURING the case, Home Office immigration investigator Robert Owen said the number of illegal immigrants coming into Britain could be six times higher than official figures. He said he could not even "guesstimate" the true number of foreign nationals living in the UK who had not gone through proper procedures. At one point, he said, 1,000 people a day were arriving at Heathrow's Terminal Three and "speaking the magic words 'asylum seeker' ". Since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Chinese officials fearing more unrest had relaxed border controls. Immigration officials first became aware of an influx of Chinese "illegals"...

HONG KONG, June 4 — Throngs began gathering here under clear skies this evening to mark the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings in Beijing, but the day passed fairly peacefully on the mainland, with about 16 people arrested in two's and three's in the square itself. An annual candlelight vigil here has become the main event at which the military crackdown is remembered, drawing tens of thousands of people, including some from the mainland. In an action certain to anger Beijing further, activists has been actively distributing flyers to mainland tourists for the first time, urging them to...

<p>It was 15 years ago today that the Communist leadership of the People's Republic of China sent tanks into Beijing's Tiananmen Square to subdue peaceful demonstrations. Thousands were killed and disappeared into the nation's gulags. In the years since, China has been welcomed into the community of nations with open arms, winning the 2008 Summer Olympics and being admitted into the World Trade Organization. The hope was that engagement and exposure to civilized governments would encourage Beijing's thugs to appreciate the rule of law. So far, the strategy has not worked. China's Communist rulers are as tyrannical as ever.</p>

Police Detain 16 at Tiananmen Square 43 minutes ago By JOE McDONALD, Associated Press Writer BEIJING - Police kept Tiananmen Square free of demonstrators Friday, detaining at least 16 people while activists abroad marked the 15th anniversary of the deadly attack on pro-democracy protesters and pressed their demands for political change. Since the June 4, 1989 military assault that killed hundreds, and possibly thousands, communist leaders have made many changes demanded by the dissidents, scrapping rules dictating where Chinese could work and whom they could marry. A decade of stunning economic growth has given millions new choices in life. But...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has ordered officials to watch a new documentary on the Tiananmen Square demonstrations to persuade younger cadres that the 1989 army crackdown could not be avoided, government sources said on Thursday. The four-hour documentary has been shown to people holding a rank of ministry department director or higher since March in order to convince a new generation of government officials who may disagree with the government line on the June 3-4 massacre. "Young cadres need to watch it because many think the crackdown was unnecessary," said one government source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The...

On the 4th of June 1989 – that is, 15 years ago – the “supreme leaders” of China crushed by armor those young people (mostly university students) who had been gathering since April in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, to persuade the “supreme leaders” of China to limit or restrict their unlimited power. When several Soviet protesters came to Red Square, Moscow, to protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, they were arrested even before they opened their posters. Surely the “supreme leaders” of China could do the same as soon as protesters began to gather in Tiananmen Square. But...

BEIJING (AP) - China's premier on Sunday defended the government's deadly 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, calling the student-led demonstrations a "very serious political disturbance" that had to be put down. In a rare, nationally televised news conference, Wen Jiabao cited China's economic advances since then as evidence the government made the right choice. He did not directly answer a question from The Associated Press about a military surgeon's petition calling on the government to admit it made mistakes in crushing the student-led protests 15 years ago. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were killed. "What hung in...

Chinese Democracy Activist Wang Released By TED ANTHONY, Associated Press Writer BEIJING - A longtime Chinese activist who helped organize the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and later co-founded a democracy party was released from prison on Thursday and left for the United States, a human rights activist said. The medical parole of Wang Youcai, on the heels of another prisoner release and a sentence reduction for a third activist, suggests the Chinese government is moving on cases the United States has identified as priorities. Wang left the Zhejiang No. 1 prison in southern China early Thursday, said goodbye to his...

Planners of Tian'anmen Square protest arrested  Two men who planned a mass protest in Tiananmen Square in December have been held in custody by police, announced Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau Tuesday. Sun Shuping, 32, from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and 46-year-old Wu Daming from southwest China's Sichuan Province were held in custody for illegal gathering and leading over 100 protesters, who came from various localities of the country to complain about different problems, to Tiananmen Square on Dec. 12,2003. Beijing police said their activities violated China's law and regulations on protest and demonstration. The illegal assembly caused a...

<p>Yesterday marked the 14th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, when China's communist government killed thousands to quell pro-democracy demonstrations. In recent years, Beijing has been welcomed into the World Trade Organization and won the contest to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. But the Chinese communists have not reformed, as evidenced by a gradual erosion of rights in Hong Kong.</p>

<p>Yesterday marked the 14th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, when China's communist government killed thousands to quell pro-democracy demonstrations. In recent years, Beijing has been welcomed into the World Trade Organization and won the contest to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. But the Chinese communists have not reformed, as evidenced by a gradual erosion of rights in Hong Kong.</p>

Mayor Ma blasts China over Falun Gong oppressionANGER: The Taipei mayor is the first high-level politician to speak out against the harsh Chinese crackdown on the spiritual group that has seen hundreds killedSTAFF WRITER Monday, Dec 30, 2002,Page 2 Taipei City mayor Ma Ying-jeou (°¨­^¤E) yesterday criticized the Beijing government for suppressing the Falun Gong movement, marking the first time a well-known Taiwan political figure has spoken out over the matter. Ma showed up at a gathering of more than 5,000 Falun Gong followers at the National Taiwan University stadium in Taipei yesterday. The movement, which teaches breathing and meditation...

SHANGHAI, China (Reuters) - In a hushed auditorium in Shanghai's People's Square, hundreds of Chinese hold their breath as an actor mounts a revolving barricade, plants a billowing red flag and strikes up a song about revolution. A chorus of comrades -- many of them students -- join the call to arms, only to die in a volley of bullets from the army offstage. The parallels with China's recent past -- the 1949 communist revolution and the Tiananmen Square student-led pro-democracy movement -- are undeniable. But what really strikes a chord with the audience in the packed, multimillion-dollar theater in...