China Accuses US of Prejudice amid Call for Full Tiananmen Disclosure
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China has accused the United States of “political prejudice” and “ignoring facts” after the U.S. State Department on Friday called on the Chinese government to fully account for those killed, detained, or missing in the bloody 1989 military crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square.
The U.S. call drew a hostile response from Beijing, in which the Chinese government said “a clear conclusion” has already been made regarding the Tiananmen Square protests.
China has accused the United States of “political prejudice” and “ignoring facts” after the U.S. State Department on Friday called on the Chinese government to fully account for those killed, detained, or missing in the bloody 1989 military crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square.
The U.S. call drew a hostile response from Beijing, in which the Chinese government said “a clear conclusion” has already been made regarding the Tiananmen Square protests.
The United States should also “immediately rectify its wrongdoings and stop interfering in China’s internal affairs so as not to sabotage China-U.S. relations”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement released through the official Xinhua news agency.
According to Xinhua, the U.S. government “releases similar statements year after year, ignoring facts and making groundless accusations against the Chinese government”.
On Friday, the U.S. state department said the 24th anniversary of the “violent suppression of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square” prompted it to remember this “tragic loss of innocent lives”.
“We renew our call for the Chinese government to end harassment of those who participated in the protests and fully account for those killed, detained or missing,” the U.S. statement added.
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Human rights remain a thorny topic between China and the United States and discussion of the crackdown remains taboo in China.
In the decades since the protests’ violent end on June 4 1989, the Chinese government has largely erased Tiananmen from its memory: bullet holes on the streets of Beijing have long been patched over and the government has barred any independent inquiry and censored all mention online.
Instead, Tiananmen Square has been reduced to a single euphemistic sentence in most school textbooks, making vague reference to “political turbulence in 1989”.
China has yet to provide any official death toll and vigorously defends its decision to send in tanks and troops to end the “counter-revolutionary” incident.
Activists in China are calling on people to wear black on the anniversary of the bloody military crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square tomorrow.
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