BEIJING, CHINA – 1989/06/01: The “Goddess of Democracy” stands tall amid a huge crowd of flag waving pro-democracy demonstrators in front of the Mao Tse Tung portrait in Tiananmen Square. Art students made the polystyrene and plaster statue in the style of the Statue of Liberty to represent their desire for a more democratic rule in Communist China. Once erected in Tiananmen Square this proved to be the last act of defiance by protestors as a few days later government troops brutally suppressed the democratic movement.. (Photo by Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Group of students at universities in UK, US and Australia issue letter urging China’s government to stop ‘covering up’ truth of 1989 protests
Pro-democracy protesters wave flags in front of the Goddess of Democracy statue in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Photograph: Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images
Emma Graham-Harrison in Beijing
Tuesday 26 May 2015 11.17 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 26 May 2015 19.01 EDT
A group of Chinese students living in western countries have issued a rare public appeal for their government to end its secrecy over the Tiananmen Square massacre and hold those responsible to account.
The open letter from 11 students enrolled at universities in the US, UK and Australia is politically risky at a time of tightening government controls on activists and rights groups, from small charities and feminists to human rights lawyers who take on politically controversial cases.
It prompted an angry attack from the hardline nationalist paper The Global Times, which accused the authors of serving “overseas hostile forces” and trying to “tear society apart”.
The lead signatory to the letter, Gu Yi, said the group felt they had a moral duty to share the information they had stumbled upon after leaving their home country, about the extent of the Tiananmen protests in Beijing and the bloody government crackdown on 4 June 1989.
Gu, a chemistry student at the University of Georgia, said: “I feel strongly as a Chinese citizen with full access to information outside China that I have a responsibility to tell my fellow citizens about this. We have been living in fear for a lot of years and what we are trying to do is fight this fear so we can live in freedom.”
The lengthy discussion of what happened in May and June 1989 was mostly addressed to fellow students at home in China, trapped behind what the letter called the “ever higher internet firewall”, but pointedly criticised the government.
The letter said: “Some say the Communist party of China has taken lessens from 4 June and we should not pursue it anymore, and yet the repression lingers on: the truth is still being covered up; the victims are still being humiliated.”
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