Wu’er Kaixi, a student leader in the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests, has been released from custody after allegedly trying to force his way into the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo last week.

A massive police presence ringed China’s Tiananmen Square today, the 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy activists, as the government continued an overwhelming drive to muzzle dissent and block commemorations.

Foreign journalists were barred from Beijing’s Tiananmen Square today as an internet clampdown expanded on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests.

Fifteen years after the bloodshed, the exiled student leaders of China’s 1989 pro-democracy protests are settled abroad as academics and entrepreneurs. But they nurture one wish above all – to come home to a new system.