A group of families demanding justice for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre said that Beijing must bear responsibility for “historical crimes” in the same way it has called on Japan to do so for its wartime past.
The Tiananmen Mothers group has long urged the Chinese government to open a dialogue and reassess China’s 1989 pro-democracy movement, violently suppressed on June 4 that year by Beijing, which labeled it “counterrevolutionary.”
In an open letter released on Monday through New York-based Human Rights in China, the group referred to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) having said that Japan has failed to reflect on its past.
China-Japan relations have long been poisoned by what China sees as Japan’s failure to atone for its occupation of parts of China before and during World War II.
Li in March said that “the leaders of a state not only inherit their predecessors’ successes, but should also bear historical responsibility for their predecessors’ crimes.”
SERIES OF CRIMES
“By the same logic, shouldn’t today’s Chinese leaders bear responsibility for the series of crimes — [human-caused] famine and slaughter — perpetrated in their own country by China’s leaders at the time: Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平)?” the group said.
It asked when China would commemorate the deaths of people during a famine from 1958 to 1961, the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 and the Tiananmen Square Massacre, saying leaders “cannot impose a forced amnesia.”
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) said China had long ago reached a “clear conclusion about the political turmoil of the 1980s.”
“The more than 30 years of the great achievements brought about by China’s reform and opening up have proven that the path of development that China has chosen is completely right,” Hua told a daily news conference.
One of the more prominent members of the Tiananmen Mothers group, Zhang Xianling (張先玲), said they were also inspired by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) remarks last month to Japanese officials that “the crime of aggression committed by Japanese militarism cannot be concealed.”
MURDER
“So we think that the crime of murder is also not easy to cover up,” Zhang, 77, told reporters by telephone. “Your killing of people in China was even more brutal than what happened during the war.”
After initially tolerating the student-led demonstrations in the spring of 1989, the Chinese Communist Party sent troops to crush the protests late on the night of June 3, killing hundreds by the morning of June 4.
The topic remains taboo in China and the Chinese Communist Party has rejected all calls to overturn its assessment of events.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS