By Jesús Centeno
Beijing (EFE).- s of the night of Jun. 3-4, 1989, when soldiers and tanks of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) entered the central Beijing square, continue to emerge over three decades after the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
The subject remains taboo in China, which has never published an official death toll from the military crackdown. Depending on the source, estimates range from hundreds to thousands of people.
The authorities maintain a vigilant presence in the square, which is accessible only after strict security and documentation checks.
However, not all of the victims died in the square, nor were they all students.
“My husband was shot near Nanchizi Street in the early morning of Jun. 3-4. He died in a hospital two days later,” said You Weijie, Yang Minghu’s wife, in a testimony reported this week by the NGO Human Rights in China.
Before he died, Yang briefly told his wife what had happened: “He said PLA soldiers came out of the Ministry of Public Security and opened fire on the crowd,” she said.
Protests demanded a more open society
Born in Beijing in 1953, You was sent to a militarized labor corps as a child during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and later worked at the capital’s Printing Factory during the early years of economic reform in the 1980s.
It was there that she met Yang, he was from Zhejiang and had just graduated from Tsinghua University. They got married and had a son.
“It was a time of contradictions,” You said. The reforms also caused inequality, inflation, and corruption, leading students to protest in 1986 and 1987 “for a more open society.”
This movement resulted in the dismissal of the then General Secretary of the Communist Party, Hu Yaobang, accused of tolerating “anti-bourgeois liberalization.” Following his death in April 1989, some university students rallied to pay tribute to him, which soon escalated into the occupation of Tiananmen Square.
Students praised Hu, a representative of the most liberal wing of the leadership, whose ideas of openness were shared by many.
Tiananmen hunger strike
“I cycling with my son one morning in early May and seeing the square full of protesters. People were giving them money. We sympathized with them. I gave some coins to my son to give to a student,” said You.
“I wanted him to understand that they were patriots too,” she said of the protesters, who escalated their demonstration by going on hunger strike during Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to China.
You described “scenes of civic solidarity” in Beijing, such as at the Guangqumen flyover, where food was delivered to the square and barricades erected to prevent the army from ing.
“ for the students seemed universal,” You recalled. Even the general secretary of the C, Zhao Ziyang, attempted to engage in dialogue with the students, believing that their demands were not directed against the Party but rather aimed at correcting its mistakes.
However, the decision had already been made and martial law declared. Zhao was purged, and the C hardliners, led by Premier Li Peng, received authorization from Deng Xiaoping, the country’s de facto leader, to use force.
Soldiers opened fire
“Wake up! Something’s happened! They’re shooting!’ Yang told his wife early that morning. Neighbors returning from the Xidan neighborhood name ponds of blood that nobody dares to ask about.
Yang decides to ride his bicycle to the square to find out what happened, but he was hit by a burst of gunfire on the way and ended up in the hospital. He died there two days later.
You carried a small funeral. “I was blinded by grief. Why did something like that happen?” she still laments.
You refused compensation from her company and eventually ed other grieving families, who found the Tiananmen Mothers, a Chinese pro-democracy organization. They are still being persecuted.
Censorship and official silence
Renee Xia, director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, told EFE that the West had soothed the sanctions imposed for the massacre too soon, allowing Beijing to become a superpower ready to dominate the international order with its own rules.
In China, searching the internet or asking DeepSeek AI about the Tiananmen Square protests yields no results. Although younger generations are unaware of the events, Xia noted that “many people still try to document what happened.”
“They find new testimonies and photographs. Despite its efforts, the government has not been able to erase this episode from the collective memory.” EFE
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