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U.S. Urges China to Free Tiananmen Protesters

The United States urged China on Sunday to free all those still held 23 years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations and to stop harassing protesters and their relatives.

State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said the United States remembered the "violent suppression" of Tiananmen and called on China to do more to protect the universal human rights of its citizens.

"We encourage the Chinese government to release all those still serving sentences for their participation in the demonstrations; to provide a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing; and to end the continued harassment of demonstration participants and their families," Toner's statement said.

The statement made no specific mention of accounts from rights campaigners that Chinese police beat and detained political activists on Sunday as they marked the 23rd anniversary of the brutal crackdown.

People's Liberation Army soldiers stormed into central Beijing on June 3-4, 1989, firing upon unarmed demonstrators and citizens, killing hundreds if not thousands, as they ended six weeks of democracy protests on Tiananmen Square.

More than two decades later, Beijing still considers the incident a "counter revolutionary rebellion" and a "political storm" and has refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing or consider compensation for those killed.

Source: Agence France Presse


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