June 4th, 1989: the students gathered in Tiananmen Square were bloodily repressed by the Chinese government. They were asking for the end of corruption and reforms, like the ones that Mikhail Gorbaciov, visiting Beijing in those days, was putting into effect in Russia.
The following bloodbath left a mark in a generation, now more than ever afraid to talk about the hopes of those years, and to link back to that experience for new protests. As a proof, the almost total denial of the Hong Kong youth movements to publicly commemorate the slaughter. The communist regime is still able to affirm that June 4th, 1989, was simply a “mistake”.
The matter is raised by Chinese students abroad, especially in the US and UK, in an open letter. Their aim was to ask the government to reveal what happened for real in the square. The 11 authors of the letter truly put themselves to the risk to advance their demand of truth, as in these days Beijing is harshly repressing activism, online too.
The first signatory of the plea, Gu Yi, underlined the moral duty to share any information they discovered on the movement oppressed on the 4th of June, 26 years ago. Unfortunately, their act of courage collided against their charges with being “hostile forces against China”, betrayed by the communist party newspapers.
The students long for the end of the victims’ humiliation, the ascertainment of the repression responsibilities and the freedom to discuss about the tragedy, even if the current governor Xin Jinping would prefer the young to celebrate the “Chinese dream” of economic growth and not to think about politics. Despite further 50 new signatures, the plea was banned from the net - the great firewall technology, safeguarding the Chinese Internet, was implemented; even private commemorations are forbidden, and those who disobey may incur in real persecutions.