Tiananmen Square survivors mark anniversary of massacre, seek reform [View All]

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

Source: The Associated Press via Yahoo News

By ANITA CHANG, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 4, 3:18 PM ET
BEIJING - For the first time in 18 years, Ding Zilin marked the anniversary of her son's death with a visit to the place where he was shot amid a violent government crackdown on protests at Tiananmen Square.

Police usually are quick to snuff out any memorials in Beijing for those killed in the crackdown that culminated in June 4, 1989, while China's government still calls the seven-week Tiananmen protest a counter-revolutionary riot and has yet to fully disclose what happened. But with China's human rights record under renewed scrutiny ahead of the 2008 Olympics, survivors of the bloody crackdown in Beijing marked the event's 18th anniversary on Monday by demanding political reform.

And Ding, who for years was placed under house arrest during Tiananmen anniversaries and other sensitive times, wept on the eve of the anniversary as she placed a photo of her son on the spot where he died a few kilometers west of Tiananmen.

"It's been 18 years and I felt like I let him down and let down the others who died with him," she said of her son, who was killed as he hid behind a flower bed from soldiers enforcing martial law on the night of June 3. He had turned 17 the day before.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070604/ap_on_re_as/china_remembering_tiananmen_7

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I'll never forgive Bill Clinton, who campaigned in 1992 on a promise to "stop coddling dictators" in China for, upon election, selling out these brave souls and changing his position to that of continuing the Nixon-Reagan-Bush policies of allowing corporations to enrich themselves on the suffering of the Chinese people. I would have expected it from a GOP president, but Clinton promised to and should have worked to promote human rights in China. Instead, he rewarded the butchers of Beijing by continuning to grant most-favored nation trading staus to China, eventually delinking human rights from its annual renewal-then making it permanant, allowing China's entry into the WTO. The corporatists in government swore that this would lead to reforms, but it has not-and they knew damn well that was the case.