Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The Chinese government "has not yet begged for pardon for atrocities perpetrated" and it honours those like Mao Tse-tung and Deng Xiaoping "whose hands are soiled with the people's blood and who have brought untold disgraces upon our nation".

This is what the "Mothers of Tiananmen" wrote in an open letter addressed to the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, to mark the 16th anniversary of the massacre in the square. In the letter, they ask the communist regime "to beg pardon before History". 

"There is no sense in recent protests by the Beijing government against Japan for its too-bland admission of World War II atrocities perpetrated in China," says the letter, "because the Chinese government itself has not yet asked pardon for atrocities it perpetrated."

"You and your predecessors," continues the letter, "have cancelled all memory of the 4 June massacre from books, and you have eliminated this despicable happening from history. You managed very well, you were more intelligent than those elements of the Japanese right who tried to cancel the Nanjing massacre from history.

"Today, you honour those like Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping and others, whose hands are soiled with the blood of the people, and who have brought untold disgrace upon our nation". The letter concludes: "Until today, you have not begged for pardon from the tens of millions of victims of these massacres and their families."

The "Mothers of Tiannamen" is a group composed of 125 families of victims of the disaster in Tiannamen Square on 2 June 1989, when troops of the national army backed by tanks, massacred defenceless protesters. For more than a month, the demonstrators had been calling for democracy and an end to corruption for Chinese society in the streets of the Chinese capital. The death toll of the massacre was never released by the government, but independent international organisations say thousands of people were killed around the square, in side streets and in the days following 4 June. The group is led by Ding Zilin.

• china
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• tiananmen
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• 4
• june
• 1989
• massacre
• history
• democracy
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