Call For Tiananmen Probe

From Radio Free Asia:

Activists demand a revision of the official verdict on the failed Chinese democracy movement.

Wikipedia

Tiananmen Mothers founding member Ding Zilin in an undated photo.

The relatives of victims of the 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square have called on China's parliament to overturn the official verdict on the movement, amid growing calls for protests similar to those that have swept through the Middle East.

"The massacre of June 4, 1989 happened nearly 22 years ago," the victims' group Tiananmen Mothers wrote in a open letter to China's National People's Congress (NPC).

"In those long years, the National People's Congress, as the highest political power in the land, has never discussed or debated the killings that happened on the Square in 1989, nor has the verdict delivered by Deng Xiaoping at the time ever been changed," it said.

The letter was published online and signed by 128 people, including Tiananmen Mothers founder member Ding Zilin, a retired Beijing university professor whose 17-year-old son was killed in the crackdown.

"Every year, we have sent a joint open letter to the annual parliamentary meetings so as to make clear what we are calling for to the delegates," Ding said on Tuesday. "Of course, we have never once received any kind of response."

Ding said the relatives of the victims had decided nonetheless to keep writing the letters.

"Even though the authorities take no notice of us, and the delegates to the parliamentary meetings are indifferent to us, at the very least we can say that we are not indifferent," she said.

"We continue to uphold the principles of rational and peaceful measures to continue to support our ... demands."

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~ See also: Chinese Move to Stop Reporting on Protests ~