Yesterday (June 4) was the 19th (I think) anniversary of the Tian An Men Square protests of 1989. For those of you who aren't familiar with these protests, they were a protest that was led by students who wanted democracy. They stayed for weeks in Tian An Men Square, even after Beijing was put under martial law. On June 4 the military PLA came into Tian An Man square and started attacking the students. Thousands were killed.
In class we are learning about the protests and yesterday we held a gathering to mourn for all the students who died. We did this because we learned that people in China are not aloud to even mention the event that happened. On the anniversaries in the past they do not let the families of the students who died mourn or get together to mourn. They do not even let the people into the graveyards where the dead were buried.
I think this was and still is shocking to many people. In Canada we are so fortunate because something like that could never have happened.
What I think was crazy was that 1000's of people, most of the students, were killed in the massacre but the government of China, after the fighting was over, told the rest of the world that no one was killed.
This was a huge moment in China's history and yet what is so sad is that it isn't spoken of where it actually happened.
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