China 'pays compensation for boy killed in 1989 protests'

Chinese authorities have paid compensation to the mother of a 15-year-old boy who was beaten to death by police amid the military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989, an activist said today.

The payment, apparently the first of its kind, did not appear to signal that China planned to compensate the hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people killed when military police were ordered to crush a swell of pro-democracy protests in the summer of 1989.