More than a thousand people gathered in Taiwan’s capital Taipei on Tuesday to commemorate the victims of China’s violent suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protest, urging the Beijing regime to stop trampling human rights.
The candlelight vigil marking the 35th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 tragedy was held in central Taipei on Tuesday with the theme “Ideals are bulletproof.”
Participants included ordinary Taiwanese residents, rights activists supporting Tibet and China’s oppressed Uyghur Muslim minority, exiled Chinese pro-democracy dissidents and Hong Kongers who have fled to Taiwan in recent years after Beijing tightened control over the former British colony.
Wu Renhua, 68, who witnessed the 1989 massacre in Beijing’s central Tiananmen Square and now lives in Taipei, told the crowd how he and students were forcibly expelled by tanks on that terrible day.
“When I returned to campus and saw the bodies run over by tanks… I vowed that I will never forget it,” Wu told the crowd.
Beginning in mid-April 1989, tens of thousands of student-led demonstrators had gathered in Tiananmen Square demanding democracy and government reforms. The protest ended in a bloodbath, a subject that remains taboo in China even decades later.
At the vigil in Taipei, participants held small electric candles and observed 64 seconds of silence at 8:09 PM (1209 GMT).
