U.S. News & World Report
Date: June 5, 2018
By: Ben Blanchard; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
BEIJING (REUTERS) – China rebuked Taiwan’s president on Tuesday for “irresponsible
FILE PHOTO: Flags of Taiwan and U.S. are placed for a meeting between U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce speaks and with Su Chia-chyuan, President of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, Taiwan March 27, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone SiuREUTERS
remarks” about the 1989 Tiananmen protests, saying Taiwan should stop harping on about the same old thing, after she called on the island’s giant neighbor to embrace democracy.
The Chinese government sent tanks to quell the June 4, 1989 protests in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and has never released a death toll. Estimates from human rights groups and witnesses range from several hundred to several thousand.
The Tiananmen crackdown is a taboo subject in China and 29 years later it remains a point of contention between China and many Western countries, as well as between China and democratic and self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as its own.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen said on Monday that if China could face up to what had happened it could become the bedrock for China’s own democratic transformation, and that she hoped one day Chinese people would be free to read for themselves her message, written on Facebook which is blocked in China. [FULL STORY]
