China arrests activists planning Tiananmen anniversary demonstrations

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2012-06-05

Hundreds of activists were arrested and taken to secret prisons as authorities thwarted planned demonstrations to remember pro-democracy campaigners who were gunned down near Tiananmen Square in China 23 years ago.

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According to activists, many of them have been put under tight surveillance in a bid to stop them from marking the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Activists also reported that social media searches related to the June 4, 1989, event have been banned.

The tight security measures came as the US urged China to free those still jailed over the demonstrations 23 years ago when hundreds but activists says thousands of civilian protestors were brutally killed by Chinese army.

According to the official account 241, including soldiers, died and 7,000 were wounded when forces in a bid to quell pro-democracy demonstrations opened fire on civilians. Rights campaigners say the numbers of dead are in the thousands. Many activists were detained and continue to be lodged in prisons.

On Sunday, the US government urged China to free them and said China's "violent suppression" of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations was "tragic loss of innocent lives".

But the Chinese government, still calling the demonstration as "counter-revolutionary rebellion", hit back at Washington saying Beijing expressed "strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition" to what foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said were "groundless accusations".

According to the BBC, Chinese police have moved to detain and pressure activists from Beijing to Fuzhou on the east coast and Guiyang in the far south-west.

"They brought in a lot of buses and were rounding up petitioners at the Beijing South rail station on Saturday night," Zhou Jinxia, a petitioner from northeast China's Liaoning province, told AFP.

Activist Hu Jia wrote on his microblog that police had stepped up security around the homes of numerous political activists and social critics.

Source: The Asia News.Net

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