Chinese police acted sternly on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on Thursday, ignoring calls from Hillary Clinton and even Taiwan’s China – friendly president for Beijing to face up to the 1989 violence. Foreign journalists were barred form the vast square as uniformed and plain-clothes police stood guard across the area which was the epicenter of the student-led movement, crushed by the military on the night of June 3-4, 1989.
Plain clothes officers confronted journalists on the streets surrounding the square, threatening violence against them. The extraordinary security moves came after government censors blocked social networking and image-sharing Websites such as Twitter and Flickr and blacked out CNN and other foreign news channels each time they aired stories about Tiananmen. Dissidents and families of crackdown victims were confined to their homes or forced to leave Beijing, in order to prevent online debates or organised commemoration of the anniversary.
Officers and police cars were stationed outside Wang Yannan’s house, the daughter of Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party leader deposed for sympathizing with the movement, revealed the Hong -Kong based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. Wang heads an auction firm and has never been politically active. The second most-wanted student leader from 1989 was also forced to return to Taiwan on Thursday after flying to the Chinese territory of Macau in an attempt to return home.