Activists Mourn Tiananmen Massacre Victims, Remind World of CCP’s ‘Brutal’ Legacy

Students from Beijing University gather with thousands of others during a huge demonstration at Tiananmen Square as they start a hunger strike as part of the mass pro-democracy protest against the Chinese regime on May 18, 1989. Catherine Henriette/AFP/Getty Images

When troops rolled into Beijing and Chinese authorities told everyone over loudspeakers to stay home, Yuan Hongbing did the opposite, jumping right into the center of the action.

Amid screaming, gunshots, and tanks, Mr. Yuan ran back and forth between hospitals and Tiananmen Square, carrying the injured on his back.

On the square’s edge, military tanks chased several fleeing student protesters, smashing their bodies against a metal fence by the road curb.

One of them, even in death, was still holding a flag with both hands.

The blood gushing out sounded louder than the rumbling tank engines, said Mr. Yuan, whose own shirt was soaked with the blood from people he tried to rescue.

“This is the brutality of the CCP,” he told The Epoch Times, using the acronym for the Chinese Communist Party.

Thirty-five years have passed since the events of that bloody night, now known as the Tiananmen Square massacre, when the regime opened fire on unarmed students who had aspired to steer communist China toward openness and democracy.

The estimated death toll ranges in the hundreds to the thousands, although a declassified 2017 British cable put the number as high as 10,000.

Tanks sit on a street in Beijing two days after the suppression of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. David Turnley/Getty Images

A rickshaw driver peddles wounded people to a nearby hospital in Beijing after they were attacked by Chinese soldiers in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. Liu Heung Shing/AP Photo

Defiance

Mr. Yuan, a law professor at Peking University at the time, eventually escaped China after spending half a year in detention over his activism.

Many others who survived suffered retaliation, losing coveted careers and facing continued surveillance from Chinese police.

The issue remains one of the most heavily censored topics in China today, with authorities detaining activists or putting them under house arrest ahead of the anniversary in a bid to prevent them from commemorating the event.

Internet censors are also watchful for keywords related to it. In October 2023, images capturing two embracing Chinese track athletes who competed in lanes six and four following a 100-meter hurdles final at the Asian Games were scrubbed from Chinese media after the numbers inadvertently formed the combination of “6-4,” a widely seen reference to the date of the 1989 massacre.

In Hong Kong, the annual vigil that once drew as many as 180,000 people at its peak has vanished as the regime tightens its grip.

People attend a candlelight vigil at Victoria Park in Hong Kong on June 4, 2019, to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. Philip Fong/AFP/Getty Images

But the censorship hasn’t stopped witnesses and pro-democracy activists from trying to mark the day.

New York City is one of many cities around the world where democracy supporters host marches or rallies to mourn the victims.

“The Communist Party doesn’t represent China,” Wang Juntao, another former Tiananmen student leader, told The Epoch Times at a New York City event on June 2.

He led other rally participants in chants of “Down with the CCP” in front of banners that highlighted the 1989 massacre’s victims and warned about the CCP’s infiltration of the United States.

Amid the intensifying suppression of freedoms in Hong Kong, local magazine Christian Times left blank most parts of its cover page in its June 2 issue. An enclosed editorial referred to “the transition from spring to summer that year,” a commonly used euphemism for the incident.

“To honestly face the past,” it read, is the only way to face the future.

Threats from Chinese actors aren’t confined to inside China.

Prominent dissident Sheng Xue, after announcing on X that she would be participating in a Los Angeles event on the Tiananmen anniversary, saw an overwhelming number of replies, including many personal attacks in Chinese. One threatened her with deadly violence.

“I wonder which one is harder: your head or the nine-millimeter wide bullet?” the message read. “Don’t wear a helmet, let me try. I’m in LA, I will be watching you from off stage.”

Ms. Sheng reported the issue to the local police, who suggested the event be called off. Ms. Sheng refused.

“Their goal is to shut me down,” she told The Epoch Times. “If I failed to show up because of this threat, they’d win, they’d accomplish what they want, right? And they can use the same tactic against everyone else who still dares to speak up.”

‘Legacy of Communism’

In Austin, Texas, preparation is underway to construct a memorial outside the state Capitol grounds to honor victims of communism, a step that will make the state the first in the country to do so.

The monument chosen for the site is a replica of the “Goddess of Democracy,” a statue first erected at Tiananmen Square during the 1989 student uprising.

“We’re not talking about something in a hypothetical; we’re talking about a style of government and a way of living that leads to brutality and has led to brutality the world over,” state Rep. Tom Oliverson, whose resolution paved the way for the project, told The Epoch Times’ sister outlet NTD.

Mr. Oliverson gained inspiration after visiting the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, which also has a replica of the statue.

People commemorate the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square Massacre at the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington on June 3, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

A student from an art institute plasters the neck of the "Goddess of Democracy" statue, a replica of New York's Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, on May 30, 1989. Catherine Henriette/AFP/Getty Images

Texas has a lot of people from different parts of the world who have experienced communism firsthand or have relatives who suffered under communist regimes, he said. Having such a monument will be a symbol for “all the innocent lives that were killed by communism” in China and worldwide so that the “future generations of Texas will never forget the true legacy of communism.”

Li Yingzhi, who, like Mr. Yuan, suffered a half-year sentence over his involvement in the Tiananmen demonstrations, cited the youths who protested all over China in late 2022 after a three-year lockdown that largely turned China into a “massive prison.” It’s a show of how extreme the regime’s control has been—and also how fragile, Mr. Li said.

“This brutal regime has to end, and the day is coming.”

Luo Ya, Shawn Ma, and Yi Ru contributed to this report.