China Floods Tiananmen Square With Police to Bar Protests

THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 2009

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BEIJING — China blanketed Tiananmen Square with police officers Thursday, determined to prevent any commemoration of the 20th anniversary of a military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left hundreds dead.

Nicholas D. Kristof, an Op-Ed columnist who was Beijing bureau chief for The Times in spring of 1989, recalls the city's mood and the student protests leading up to June 4, 1989.

Two decades after the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, how do the Chinese speak out against the government?

Visitors to the sprawling plaza in central Beijing were stopped at checkpoints and searched, and foreign television crews and photographers were turned away. Plainclothes police, standing rigidly next to uniformed officers, seemed to outnumber the tourists. White government vans were parked in a line in front of the Mao Zedong’s mausoleum.

Some who wished to remember the bloody end to the student-led movement suggested on Internet chat sites that visitors wear white to the square. But there was no clear sign of that on Thursday morning, nor signs of any other protests.

In Washington, Secretary of StateHillary Rodham Clintoncalled on Beijing to publish the names of those killed or missing, saying it would help China “heal.”

“A China that has made enormous progress economically and is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership should examine openly the darker events of its past,” Mrs. Clinton said in a statement.

She called on Chinese authorities to release all prisoners still serving sentences in connection with the June 4 events, adding, “China can honor the memory of that day by moving to give the rule of law, protection of internationally recognized human rights, and democratic development the same priority as it has given to economic reform.”

The president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, who has fostered closer ties to the mainland through a series of trade and tourism accords, took an unusually strong tone in remarks about Beijing’s refusal to re-examine the 1989 episode. He called for a fuller accounting by the Communist government, saying that “this painful period of history must be faced with courage and cannot be intentionally ducked.”

Public discussion of the anniversary in China was systematically blocked. There was no mention of the anniversary in Thursday’s Beijing newspapers. In the state-run mass-circulation China Daily, the lead stories were about job growth in China and the purchase of the Hummer brand from General Motors by a Chinese firm.

Earlier this week, popular Internet services like Twitter and many university message boards were shut down.

Ahead of the anniversary, a number of prominent dissidents have either been detained, confined to their homes or escorted out of town by the police.

Jiang Qisheng, who was imprisoned for four years in 1999 after he published a letter asking the Communist Party to reassess the June 4 events, said he has been confined to his Beijing apartment, except for brief walks.

“They started watching me in my apartment building on May 15th,” he said in a telephone interview. “Before yesterday, I could go swimming or grocery shopping, but in their car, of course. But since yesterday, I have been prevented from going anywhere.

“We never forget June 4th,” he said, “and I believe most of Chinese people of my generation don’t forget. They are just tied up with daily routine life.”

At the Macao airport in southern China, immigration authorities detained a former key student leader of the Tiananmen Square protests. Arriving from Taiwan, Wu’er Kaixi, now a 41-year-old investment banker, said he wanted to surrender to Chinese authorities and face trial after 20 years in exile.

“I have decided enough is enough,” he said in an telephone interview from the airport detention room. “We dissidents in exile, that’s what we do. We try very hard to come home, all of us, but the door is shut very tightly.”

He said he decided to try to turn himself in because he hadn’t seen his parents for two decades.

“I also want to be in a courtroom so that I can talk,” he said.

In 1989, Mr. Wu’er was a charismatic 21-year-old student from Beijing Normal University and one of the main leaders of the pro-democracy movement that was crushed by the military. Hundreds died — if not more — when the government dispatched troops and tanks to the square. Mr. Wu’er, who was No. 2 on the government’s list of the 21 most-wanted protest leaders, escaped overseas.

Had he known the outcome would be so bloody, Mr. Wu’er said Wednesday, he is not sure that he would have tried to keep the protests going.

“If you know there is going to be loss of human life, ‘’ he said, “how can you make that decision?”

Mr. Wu’er said in a text message that he had been forced to board a 1:26 p.m. flight on Thursday from Macao to Taiwan, where he lives with his wife and two sons.

The Associated Press reported that Xiang Xiaoji, another dissident who took part in the 1989 demonstrations, was denied entry to Hong Kong on Wednesday. The anniversary of the June 4 crackdown is commemorated every year with a candlelight vigil there, and preparations were under way Thursday for the evening gathering in Victoria Park.

A U.S. Consulate General spokesman told the news agency that the decision to deport Mr. Xiang, now an American citizen, was “particularly regrettable in light of Hong Kong’s well-known reputation as an open society.”

Zhang Jing and Xiyun Yang contributed research, and Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kong.