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BEIJING (AFP) — China stepped up security in Tiananmen Square on Wednesday -- 65 days ahead of the Olympics -- as relatives of victims marked the 19th anniversary of the deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protests.
The Tiananmen massacre is a taboo subject in China and the country's state-run media was silent on the anniversary despite calls from Washington for Beijing to improve its image in the lead-up to the Olympics and come clean on the crackdown.
Despite the official blanket censorship that has resulted in few Chinese ever having access to information about the event, one local group vowed to keep the memory of the massacre alive.
The Tiananmen Mothers, a group of family members of victims of the crackdown, were able to pay respects in private to their loved ones at memorial services in the capital.
"As time passes, this kind of gathering becomes even more significant," said Ding Zilin, a former university professor who set up the group after her teenage son was killed.
"Not just to remember the dead but also to look ahead to the future."
In Hong Kong, thousands gathered for a candlelight vigil held annually to mark the massacre, the only such commemoration on Chinese soil.
The number of attendees was well below that seen last year, despite organisers' efforts to tie the event to last month's devastating earthquake in Sichuan.
Hong Kong-based activist Han Dongfang urged China to use the sense of national unity after the earthquake to quell anger over the 1989 crackdown.
"The government should learn the lesson of 19 years ago, when that spirit was squandered and lost in the June 4 crackdown," said Han, who was jailed following the crackdown and now runs the Hong Kong-based worker's rights group the China Labour Bulletin.
"As the country struggles to recover from the recent natural disaster, steps could be taken to heal the social and political wounds left over from that (1989) period too."
Wary of trouble on the sensitive anniversary, police and paramilitary troops in Beijing fanned out across Tiananmen Square, scene of the 1989 pro-democracy protests that triggered a crackdown which left hundreds, possibly thousands dead.
Most people on the square appeared to be domestic tourists oblivious to the significance of the anniversary, and no unusual incidents were reported amid the heavy security presence.
For some, the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown has cast a shadow over preparations to host the August 8-24 Olympics, seen here as a "coming-out party" for China following three decades of reform and opening.
Chinese dissidents and foreign human rights groups allege that the communist authorities are using the Games to clamp down further on individual freedoms.
China has put the emphasis on security and stability in the run-up to the Games, following anti-government unrest in Tibet in March.
The government has also reported terrorist threats to the Games from Muslim separatists in China's far western region of Xinjiang and other groups.
In one sign of the alleged clampdown, two Chinese rights lawyers who offered free services to Tibetans linked to the March unrest were banned by Chinese authorities from practising, one of them told AFP.
"The authorities' refusal to allow me to work as a lawyer is a violation of my legal rights," Teng Biao told AFP.
China's Communist Party has never offered a full account of the crackdown on the night of June 3-4, when troops and tanks gunned down students and other protesters who had been demonstrating peacefully in the square for weeks.
The government branded the pro-democracy protests a counter-revolutionary rebellion and hunted down ringleaders, while jailing hundreds of suspects.
On the eve of the anniversary Washington urged China to come clean on the massacre and release prisoners taken during the protests.
"The time for the Chinese government to provide the fullest possible public accounting of the thousands killed, detained, or missing in the massacre that followed the protests is long overdue," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
New York-based Human Rights Watch estimates that 130 prisoners are still being held for their part in the Tiananmen protests.