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January 17th, 2005
Fifteen Years And Fewer Counting
I'm not sure you can call him a hero, but definitely
a reminder of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square, which the Chinese rulers work so hard to make everyone forget.
Zhao Ziyang, who was ousted as China's Communist Party leader after sympathizing with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests and became a symbol of the era's shattered hopes, died Monday after 15 years under house arrest. He was 85.
[...]
[H]e fell out of favor with Deng and was purged on June 24, 1989, after the military crushed the student-led protests, killing hundreds and possibly thousands of people. He was accused of "splitting the party" by supporting demonstrators who wanted democratic reforms.
Check out the Ashcroftian lengths the Chinese rulers went to minimize the news.
The official announcement to China's people was limited to a two-sentence Xinhua report carried by Web sites and afternoon newspapers. But Xinhua sent an advisory telling radio and television broadcasters not to use it. CNN broadcasts to hotels and apartment complexes for foreigners were blacked out when they mentioned Zhao.
Well, at least they don't have FoxNews.