Tiananmen Square massacre: The day China wants to forget

China’s national calendar is packed with annual festivals and commemorations. Highlights include International Nurse Day, Teachers’ Day, Journalists’ Day — that’s for journalists who haven’t been imprisoned for championing free speech — and, this year, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, for which the government has issued a new logo to be used at celebratory events.

A profoundly significant day in China’s history that is not memorialised is June 4, 1989, when an unknown number — estimates range from a few hundred to more than 10,000 — of pro-democracy protestors were murdered in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square by the People’s Liberation Army.