Throughout the spring of 1989, students had been conducting peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations at the Chinese landmark. Fearing that it could join the Soviet Union in the dustbin of history, the Chinese military took extreme actions to put down the student rallies. The massacre began on the night of June 3 and carried through June 4. By the time it was all done, the Chinese military had murdered hundreds, possibly thousands, of its own citizens. The actual numbers are unknown due to the governmental control over news reporting.
There has been no great idealogical shift in China since the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The AP has reported the following:
In advance of the anniversary, Chinese authorities detained activists and relatives of people killed in 1989 or ordered them out of Beijing. On Friday, broadcasts of CNN to hotels and apartment compounds for foreigners in the Chinese capital were blacked out repeatedly when the network showed reports on the crackdown.
As many people around the world praise China for its recent economic developments, let us not forget the evil that the People's Republic of China is willing to perpetrate on its own people.
