Police launch clampdown on Tiananmen Square anniversary

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.

An exiled protest leader – famous for publicly haranguing one of China’s top leaders 20 years ago – was also blocked from returning home to confront officials over what he called the “June 4 massacre”.

Foreign journalists were barred from the vast square as uniformed and plainclothes police stood guard across the vast plaza that was the epicentre of the student-led movement that was crushed by the military on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

Security officials checking passports also blocked foreign TV camera operators and photographers from entering covering the raising of China’s national flag, which happens at dawn every day.

The heavy security moves come after government censors shut down social networking and image-sharing web sites such as Twitter and Flickr, blacked out CNN when it airs stories on Tiananmen.

Dissidents were confined to their homes or forced to leave Beijing, part of sweeping efforts to prevent online debate or organised commemorations of the anniversary.

In another sign of the government’s unwavering hard-line stance toward the protests, the second most-wanted student leader from 1989 said he had been denied entry to the southern Chinese territory of Macau.

Wu’er Kaixi, in exile since fleeing China after the crackdown, travelled to Macau yesterday to turn himself in to authorities in a bid to return home.

He said he spent the night at the Macau airport’s detention centre, and immigration officials planned to deport him to Taiwan today.

The denial of entry on the Tiananmen anniversary was a “tragedy,” Mr Wu’er said.

Mr Wu’er rose to fame in 1989 as a pyjama-clad hunger striker yelling at then-premier Li Peng at a televised meeting during the protests.

Named number two on the government’s list of 21 most-wanted student leaders after the crackdown, he escaped and now lives in exile in the self-ruled island of Taiwan. An attempt to return home in 2004 was rebuffed when he was deported from the Chinese territory of Hong Kong.

Mr Wu’er said in a statement issued through a friend that he wants to turn himself in to the Chinese authorities so he can visit his parents – who haven’t been allowed to leave China.

The student leader who topped the most-wanted list, Wang Dan, was jailed for seven years before being expelled to the United States in 1998.