Tiananmen Square: after over two decades democracy still held down in China

"The government still has not released any information on the incidents, or the number of people killed and imprisoned," Hom said. "To the government of China, Tiananmen Square, which all the rest of the world knows happened, did not happen. I have been told by young Chinese that I am brainwashed by the West to think that Chinese students were killed at Tiananmen Square."

The only place in China where Tiananmen Square is publicly commemorated is Hong Kong. But this year, that commemoration, too, has been repressed.

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 "While the Chinese government prohibits its people from publicly discussing the events of June 4th, the people of Hong Kong exercise their civil liberties on each anniversary by holding a candlelight vigil in memory of the victims," U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a prepared statement.  "This year for the first time, police arrested activists and confiscated the Goddess of Democracy replica statue that is the symbol of the Tiananmen movement.  This crackdown on freedom of expression will only succeed in shining a spotlight on the courage of Hong Kong's democratic movement."

Chinese activists in exile are keeping the memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre alive in cyberspace. Wang Dan, for instance, one of the most visible student demonstrators on the scene in 1989 and reputedly the most wanted of the demonstrators to escape the government's iron fist, is using Twitter this year to keep in touch with others commemorating the event. The Tiananmen Mothers, a group of the parents of disappeared youths from the bloody crackdown, have .been imploring the government for two decades to at least let them know what happened to their unaccounted-for children. Although the Chinese government continues to ignore them, the group has lately received attention from news outlets around the world.

An essay written by the group, addressed to the government and made public this year by Human Rights in China says, in part: 

"You have posted guards and sentries in front of the home of each victim's family, followed us closely, watched us, eavesdropped on our phone conversations, interfered with our computer communications, and opened and confiscated our mail. You have even arbitrarily detained us, arrested us, searched our homes and confiscated our possessions, frozen donations to us, and deprived the freedom of movement of relatives of the victims."

Hom said that, while completely suppressing democracy, the Chinese government has made economic moves to open its markets and now wields "a great deal of economic clout" throughout the world.

"Companies anxious to do business with China are willing to ignore human rights abuses, pretending that such matters have nothing to do with business," she said. "But they are slowly finding out that they are mistaken."

Hom said the lack of governmental accountability, transparency and an independent press is having negative effects upon Chinese industries and the Western companies that do business with China.

"There is widespread labor unrest, grave health issues with the workforce from detrimental conditions, huge environmental costs and continued repression," she said. "Western businesses are beginning to take note."

Google took note. In January, the Internet giant postponed the launch of its mobile phone in China after discovering that the government had initiated cyber attacks against Google aimed at accessing e-mail accounts of human rights activists in China and abroad.

In March of this year, China strengthened its State Secrets Law to  tighten its control of the flow of information in the digital age, according to Human Rights in China. The law now includes a provision that puts people working for government-owned businesses on notice that any information they may reveal about their operations - what in the West we would consider normal transparency in business negotiations - could be considered revealing a state secret and subject the offender to arrest and imprisonment.

"Every year at this time, Western politicians and government officials express their admiration for and solidarity with the repressed democracy movement in China," Hom said. "But where the rubber meets the road, they lack the political backbone to stand up against China's abuses and continue to allow her access to world markets, as though she were not the repressive, totalitarian regime that she is."