20 TIANANMEN LATER

Those who refer to the “efficiency” and “productivity” of the fastest growing economy of the world often forget that the Chinese state is grounded on the most cruel pillars of repression and human rights violations. Today, those of us, believers in freedom and not in economic statistics that often erase the human experience, remember with pride and sadness those days of June 1989 when Chinese university students spontaneously, out of an official refusal to mourn the remains of a reformist party official, led one of the most brave and honourable resistance movements of the 20th century – The Tianannmen Square Rebellion.

---
For a brief description of events see: June 4, 1989: Tiananmen Square massacre takes place - The History Channel

I express my opposition to Google's complicity with the Chinese regime in helping them act as 'Great Brothers' of information.

24 January 2006
"Google Agrees to Censor Results in China," Associated Press, January 24, 2006.

Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country's free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet's fastest growing market. Although China has loosened some of its controls in recent years, some topics, such as Taiwan's independence and 1989's Tiananmen Square massacre, remain forbidden subjects.

Graphic Memory and Captions: Tiananmen Square, 1989 The Declassified History


A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijing's Cangan Blvd. in Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989. The man, calling for an end to the recent violence and bloodshed against pro-democracy demonstrators, was pulled away by bystanders, and the tanks continued on their way. The Chinese government crushed a student-led demonstration for democratic reform and against government corruption, killing hundreds, or perhaps thousands of demonstrators in the strongest anti-government protest since the 1949 revolution. Ironically, the name Tiananmen means "Gate of Heavenly Peace". (AP Photo/Jeff Widener)


A Beijing University student leader argues with a policeman about the students' right to march as they are told not to march when emerging from their campus in Beijing, China, on April 27, 1989. Students from more than forty universities march to Tiananmen Square in protest of the April 26 editorial in the Communist Party newspaper despite warnings of violent suppression. (AP Photo/Mark Avery)

Calling for freedom and democracy, demonstrating students surround policemen near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, Thursday afternoon on May 4, 1989. Approximately 100,000 students and workers marched toward the square demanding democratic reforms. (AP Photo/Sadayuki Mikami)


The bodies of dead civilians lie among mangled bicycles near Beijing's Tiananmen Square early June 4, 1989. Tanks and soldiers stormed the area overnight, bringing a violent end to student demonstrations for democratic reform in China. (AP Photo)


A rickshaw driver fiecely peddles the wounded people, with the help of bystanders, to a nearby hospital Sunday, June 4, 1989. PLA soldiers again fired hundreds of rounds towards angry crowds gathered outside Tiananmen Square at noon. (AP Photo/Liu Heung Shing)


Local residents loaded the wounded people on a rickshaw flatbed shortly after PLA soldiers opened fire on a crowd in this June 4, 1989 photo. On Friday, it will be 10 years since the military assault that killed hundreds and ended seven weeks of protests centered on Tiananmen Square.(AP Photo/Liu Heung Shing)


PLA soldiers locked in arms try to march past a human blockade of students outside of the Great Hall of People in this June 3, 1989 photo. Soldiers were reported to resort to teargas and amunitions. On Friday, it will be 10 years since the military assault that killed hundreds and ended seven weeks of protests centered on Tiananmen Square. (AP Photo/Liu Heung Shing)


Beijing residents ask soldiers what they were going to do with the machine gun on their dashboard as they surround and stop a carload of chinese soldiers on their way towards to Tiananmen Square in this June 3, 1989 photo. Friday June 4, 1999 is the 10th anniversary of the military assault on pro-democracy protesters who had occupied the square for seven weeks. Hundreds died in the early hours of June 4, 1989 when troops shot their way through Beijing's streets to retake the square. (AP Photo/Mark Avery, File)


A student from Beijing Normal University reads a pro-democracy statement to Chinese troops trapped by Beijing residents after being stopped on their way to Tiananmen Square in this June 3, 1989 photo. Friday June 4, 1999 is the 10th anniversary of the military assault on pro-democracy protesters who had occupied the square for seven weeks. Hundreds died in the early hours of June 4, 1989 when troops shot their way through Beijing's streets to retake the square. (AP Photo/Mark Avery)


huge crowd gathers at a Beijing intersection where residents used a bus as a roadblock to keep troops from advancing toward Tiananmen Square in this June 3, 1989 photo. Friday June 4, 1999 is the 10th anniversary of the military assault on pro-democracy protestors who had occupied the square for seven weeks. Hundreds died in the early hours of June 4, 1989 when troops shot their way through Beijing's streets to retake the square. (AP Photo/Jeff Widener)


A student protester puts barcades in the way of an already burning armored personnel carrier that rammed through student lines during an army attack on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in this June 4, 1989 photo. Friday June 4, 1999 is the 10th anniversary of the military assault on pro-democracy protesters who had occupied the square for seven weeks. Hundreds died in the early hours of June 4, 1989 when troops shot their way through Beijing's streets to retake the square. (AP Photo/Jeff Widener)


A man tries to pull a Chinese soldiers away from his comrades as thousands of Beijing citizens turned out to block thousands of troops on their way towards Tiananmen Square in this June 3, 1989 photo. On Friday, it will be 10 years since the military assault that killed hundreds and ended seven weeks of protests centered on Tiananmen Square. (AP Photo/Mark Avery)


Bicycle commuters, sparse in numbers, pass through a tunnel as above on the overpass military tanks are positioned in Beijing, China, two days after the Tiananmen Square massacre,on Tuesday morning, June 6, 1989. The slogan on the wall at left reads, "Strike down martial law." (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)


A Chinese couple on a bicycle take cover at an underpass as tanks deploy overhead in eastern Beijing, China, June 5, 1989. Chinese troops crushed a pro-democracy demonstration held by students and other demading democratic reform in Tiananmen Square on June 4. (AP Photo/Liu Heung Shing)


Chai Ling, a Chinese dissident who led the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, is shown during a news conference she held with her husband, Feng Congde, in Paris, France, Wednesday, April 18, 1990. Chai warned China's communist rulers that their days are numbered and said resistance in the country is growing daily. Chai and Feng spent ten months on the run in China before reaching France earlier this month. (AP Photo/Michel Lipchitz)


This is a May 27, 1989 photo of student leader Wang Dan in Tiananmen Square Beijing calling for a city wide march. (AP Photo/Mark Avery)


Chinese dissident Wang Dan meets reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday May 6, 1998. Wang, leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests, was released from jail 17 days ago. (AP Photo/William Philpott)


FILE--This March 4, 1994 file photo shows the guard tower at the Liaoyuan prison in northwest China's Liaoning province, the place where Chinese Tiananmen Square democracy movement dissident Liu Gang was held for six years. Gang has now escaped to the United States where he is seeking asylum. (AP Photo/Charlene Fu)


Chinese dissident Chen Ziming is seen in this September 1989 file photo at an unknown location. China released the ailing dissident Wednesday, November 6, 1996, just weeks before the expected arrival of U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher on a visit to improve ties. Chen, one of the organizers of the pro-democracy protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989, was freed on medical parole and arrived home Wednesday, his younger brother Chen Ziping said. (AP Photo)


pro-democracy activist wearing a headband with the words ``Don't Forget June 4 '' and holding a lighted candle raises his fist during a candlelight vigil Tuesday, June 4, 1996 by thousands of people at Hong Kong's Victoria Park to mark the seventh anniversary of the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)


Chinese dissident Wang Dan is seen in his family's home in Beijing in this March 8, 1994 photo. In a secretive trial lasting less than four hours, China Wedensday convicted the leader of the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests of trying to overthrow the Communist government. Wang, 27, was found guilty of "conspiring to subvert the Chinese government" and sentenced to 11 years in prison, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said. (AP Photo/Greg Baker)


FILE--Chinese senior leader Deng Xiaoping, left, shakes hands with officers of the People's Liberation Army in Beijing June 9, 1987 while former President Li Xiannian, left, looks on. In this file photo, Deng praised the military suppression of the pro-democratcy movement in an address to the officers in his first public appearance after the Tiananmen Square incident. Deng, 92, died Wednesday night, Feb. 19, 1997 in Beijing. (AP Photo/File, Xinhua News Agency)


The portrait of Mao Tse-tung overlooking Tiananmen Square faces off a statue erected in the square May 30, 1989. The statue was dubbed "The Goddess of Democracy" by students from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, who modeled it after the Statue of Liberty. (AP Photo/Jeff Widener)


Chinese human rights activists and former political prisoner Harry Wu gestures while talking to the media during a rally in San Francisco's Chinatown, Sunday, June 1, 1997, during a memorial program for the victims and survivors of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. Off to the left is the "Goddess of Democracy" statue memorializing of the Tiananmen Square incident. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)


Demonstrators carry a banner depicting the Goddess of Democracy during a march through a Hong Kong street Sunday, June 1, 1997 to remember those killed in the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in China eight years ago in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)


A masked protester waves a copy of a Chinese newspaper featuring the Tiananmen military massacre by Chinese soldiers in Hong Kong after its handover Tuesday, July 1, 1997. Britain returned Hong Kong to China after 156 years of colonial rule and the Chinese People's LIberation Army entered the city. (AP Photo)


A Chinese man wearing a T-shirt with protest slogans is tackled by a military policeman after he threw leaflets in Beijing's Tiananmen Square Friday, June 4, 1999, the 10th anniversary of the bloody military assault on pro-democracy demonstrators. The man, who claimed to be a Beijing University student, was protesting official corruption, a key complaint of the 1989 protesters. Hundreds died when troops shot their way through the city streets on June 4, 1989, to retake the square from student led demonstrators who had occupied it for seven weeks. (AP Photo/Greg Baker)


A plain clothed policeman, with a two-way radio wrapped in a newspaper, keeps watch in Beijing's Tiananmen Square Friday, June 4, 1999, the 10th anniversary of the bloody military assault on pro-democracy demonstrators. Security was increased in the square Friday in an attempt to prevent any public commemorations of the bloody crackdown. Hundreds died when troops shot their way through the city streets on June 4, 1989, to retake the square from student led demonstrators who had occupied it for seven weeks. (AP Photo/Greg Baker)


China's banned sect Falun Gong protesters, sitting in center, are picked up by police officers as they meditate in Tiananmen Square on Wednesday September 29, 1999 in Beijing. Taking no chances with disgruntled unemployed workers and the recent crackdown on Falungong meditators, security is tight in the capital as the city prepares for National Day celebrations this Friday, October 1. (AP Photo)