![]() "They park their police car in front of her shop and stand watching her, causing her mental health problems." "Since then, they have harassed her, called her in to ' drink tea ', but the most terrifying thing has been the stalking," Wang said. But they didn't get any evidence of that even after 24 hours of interrogation," he said.īut because Huang told police that she had never even heard of Zhou, and that he had initiated contact, not her, she was released by police on that occasion, he said. "The police seemed to think she had been colluding with foreign forces. "They detained her because it was a very sensitive matter," Wang said. "I seem to have brought disaster down on her," Zhou told Radio Free Asia, adding that he had also messaged Huang to thank her for the video last year. Police started stepping up their surveillance and harassment of Huang after her video dance was reposted to Twitter by the U.S.-based former 1989 student leader Zhou Fengsuo on Sept. Later, it started appearing on overseas sites not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and was posted again to YouTube on June 5, 2022, where it was also picked up by the U.S.-based China Digital Times website. Huang first made the video to mark the anniversary of the massacre in 2021, and uploaded it to WeChat Moments, where it was soon deleted by government censors. Public commemoration of the massacre is banned in mainland China, while an annual candlelight vigil that used to mark the anniversary in Hong Kong's Victoria Park has fallen silent after more than three decades, its leaders in prison under a draconian national security law used to crack down on public dissent. ![]() In the video, Huang is dressed in black and performs a graceful "hand dance" to a mournful background track.Ī couple of times during the dance, her hands form the hand signals – often used by street vendors and in regular conversation – to denote the numbers 6 and 4, a reference to the date of the June 4, 1989, massacre of unarmed civilians by the People's Liberation Army with machine guns and tanks. Huang Zhihong, who goes by the username Poinsettia, is suffering from deteriorating mental health amid constant surveillance by police in the southern province of Guangdong, said her friend Wang Zhihua, who now lives in New York and who recently spoke with her via video call. The authorities punish those who try to commemorate the event, and relatives of the victims who died during the massacre are barred from openly mourning their loved ones.A woman who uploaded a short video of herself doing a hand dance to the social media platform WeChat in which she mimes a reference to the 1989 Tiananmen massacre is being harassed by Chinese authorities, according to her social media posts and a friend who has spoken with her. ‘June 4’, as the movement is commonly known as in China, remains largely scrubbed from official history and is censored from school text books and online. Thirty years on, the Chinese authorities continue to view the Tiananmen protests as one of the most sensitive and taboo subjects. The actual number of deaths from the crackdown remains unknown, but it is believed the Chinese army killed at least 10,000 people, according to a secret diplomatic cable from the British ambassador to Beijing. On 5 June, an unidentified young man stood in front of a tank convoy leaving Tiananmen Square, in a final act of defiance. Some forty workers who went to plead with the soldiers were shot. Armoured cars and tanks smashed through the citizens’ barricades. In the early hours of 4 June, Chinese troops launched a two-pronged attack with orders to put down the protests. Troops moved in, but were blocked by the civilians and demonstrations continued. ![]() On 20 May, martial law was declared in parts of Beijing. The protests forced the cancellation of the welcoming ceremony. On 13 May, just two days before the arrival of Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev for a state visit, hundreds of students began a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square. The next day, tens of thousands of students in Beijing staged a demonstration to protest against the editorial. On 26 April, an editorial in the Communist Party’s People’s Daily denounced the student demonstrations as a ‘premeditated and organised conspiracy and turmoil’. The demonstrations spread to hundreds of cities. They called for greater freedom of speech, economic freedoms and curbs on corruption. Two days after his death, on 17 April, several hundred students marched to Tiananmen Square and laid a wreath to him. ![]() In April 1989, popular Chinese reformist leader Hu Yaobang died. ![]()
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