Tiananmen 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Tiananmen Square events happened in 1989, so the students who were there are more or less in their 50's and some of them want to speak up. 

Wang Dan was one of the student leaders in that movement thirty years ago.

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"When the People’s Liberation Army sent tanks and machine-gun-toting troops onto Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, Wang was not on the sprawling plaza facing the Forbidden City and the Great Hall of the People.

“I was in a dorm on my campus. But I got a lot of phone calls from my friends along Tiananmen Square… so gradually I learned that more and more people died,” he said. The scale of the bloodshed – the real toll is still a mystery – left Wang devastated."

He spent years after 1989 traveling in China to promote his convictions, and also served two prison sentences. “I still felt I had some obligations and responsibilities towards those persons who died in 1989 or sacrificed their youth,” he said.