More than 120 relatives of people killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre 17 years ago have called on the government to reassess its official verdict of the incident and to compensate victims’ families.
A statement from the group Tiananmen Mothers just days before the June 4 anniversary of the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement also urged the government to allow families to openly mourn their loved ones.
The incident still touches a raw nerve with Chinese authorities. Open commemoration of the incident is strictly banned and survivors or families of the victims who try to seek recourse are often harassed by authorities.
“The June 4 massacre was an act of anti-humanity atrocity. It was absolutely not ‘a crackdown on anti-revolutionary riot’ like the government has said,” said the statement issued through New York-based Human Rights in China.
“Therefore, the verdict … has to be completely overturned and reassessed.”
It called on the government to lift all restrictions on the freedom of the surviving victims and their families and to provide financial and humanitarian help to those who continue to suffer psychologically or financially.
Many activists are now unemployed and marginalized by society because of their association with the movement denounced by authorities as anti-revolutionary.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of unarmed protesters and citizens were gunned down in the streets of Beijing when the People’s Liberation Army moved in to quell the six week-long democracy protests in 1989.
A Chinese journalist freed in February after 17 years in jail for splattering ink on the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s portrait during the movement has gone insane after suffering years of harsh treatment and mental torture.
Last month, China paid compensation to the mother of Zhou Guocong, a teenager who was killed in the suppression of the movement, marking the first known case of its kind.
The government has insisted to this day that the heavy-handed response to quell what it called “the counter-revolutionary rebellion” paved the way for 17 years of robust economic growth.
