Beijing: Beijing marked 30 years since the deadly Tiananmen crackdown on Tuesday with a wall of silence and extra security, while trading barbs with the United States over China's human rights record. Police checked the identification cards of every tourist and commuter leaving the subway near Tiananmen Square, the site of the pro-democracy protests that were brutally extinguished by tanks and soldiers on June 4, 1989.
Foreign journalists were not allowed onto the square at all or warned by police not to take pictures. Officials also told one reporter that "illegal media behaviour" could impact visa renewals. The United States marked the occasion by hailing the "heroic" movement of 1989.
But in China the Communist Party made sure the anniversary remained a distant memory, detaining several activists in the run-up to June 4 while popular livestreaming sites conspicuously shut down for "technical" maintenance.
Searches by AFP for the term "Tiananmen" on the Twitter-like Weibo platform on Tuesday displayed the official logo of the 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China.
Over the years, the party has censored any discussion of the protests and crackdown, which left hundreds, possibly more than 1,000 people, dead -- ensuring that people either never learn about what happened or fear detention if they dare discuss it openly.
The party and its high-tech police apparatus have tightened control over civil society since President Xi Jinping took office in 2012, rounding up activists, rights lawyers and even Marxist students who sympathised with labour movements.
Countless surveillance cameras are perched on lampposts in and around Tiananmen Square. "It's not that we don't care. We know what happened," said a driver for the DiDi ride-hailing service who was born in 1989.
