Ten Years After Tiananmen

A young protester who flung a fistful of leaflets into the air on Tiananmen Square provided a lone flicker of dissent on the 10th anniversary of the crackdown on the 1989 pro-democracy movement on Friday.

Police pounced on the young man after chasing him from the Gate of Heavenly Peace on the edge of the square, where a giant portrait of Mao Zedong gazes out.

It was not clear what the leaflets said. Foreign journalists who witnessed the event were also detained.

There were no other reports of protests and no sign of public mourning for the hundreds, possibly thousands, of people killed when troops and tanks shot their way into the square on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

The day began just as ChinaÂ's leaders wanted it, not with protest but with pomp and circumstance, reports CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen. With soldiers raising the flag in a daily ritual, all was peaceful.

		CHINA : 10 Years  A  F  T  E  R    T  I  A  N  A  N  M  E  N > An Interactive Guide to Modern China and the Massacre in Tiananmen Square.

But ChinaÂ's leaders were nervous about this day, staging a nation-wide crack down to make sure everything was peaceful.

However, many Chinese donÂ't seem that interested in Tiananmen. They have developed other interests in the last ten years. China is a lot more prosperous today than it was ten years ago. ThatÂ's one reason it is so quiet.

Bereaved families of the victims of the sweep ten years ago flocked to cemeteries carrying white flowers and offerings of rice wine. Some silently remembered the dead at home by lighting candles.

Security was tight around the vast square, which has been sealed off with a steel curtain for renovations.

Police searched several people, and led one elderly man away, although it was not clear whether this was linked to the anniversary.

Foreign reporters, cameramen and photographers were picked up throughout the day and released after lectures about reporting wthout a specific permit. Videotape and film were confiscated.

Students at Peking University, the hotbed of the 1989 movement, were busy preparing for final examinations and showed little interest in the anniversary.

State television showed workmen laying new marble flagstones on the square, which is getting a facelift ahead of celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of Communist China. But it made no mention of the 1989 events.

Â"We lit candles at home all night yesterday,Â" said Zhou Shuzhuang, the mother of a slain Qinghua University student.

Â"My heart is very heavy. It brings back memories,Â" Zhou said in a telephone interview.

Zhou was joined at the Wan'an Public Cemetery in west Beijing by four other victims' families who wore white flowers -- the traditional color of Chinese mourning -- pinned to their chests.

The mothers wept as dozens of plainclothes and uniformed police hovered at a distance.

Â"Even an animal feels pain when it loses its cub let alone a human being,Â" said Zhang Xianling, whose 19-year-old son died in the army onslaught.

Â"The wound has become a scar, but the scar has not healed completely,Â" Zhang said.

Communist authorities have labeled the 1989 student-led protests a Â"counter-revolutionary riotÂ" whipped up by hostile foreign forces in the United States and elsewhere.

The students were demanding democracy, but also an end to corruption and economic mismanagement, greater press freedom and better job prospects for university graduates. More than a million Beijing residents joined their crusade.

Since the crackdown, the government has shored up its power by delivering fast-paced growth that has created new opportunities for educated young people, and by expanding personal freedoms.

But political reform pushed by toppled Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang before the crackdown has been abandoned.

Bao Tong, Zhao's former top aide and the most senior official purged over the protests, spoke out to demand democracy as the only cure for China's rampant corruption. And he lamented China's lost chance for political reform in 1989.

Â"The year 1989 was the best opportunity to launch political reforms, but it's a real pity the army was finally called in to put it down,Â" said Bao, who spent seven years in jail and was expelled from the Communist Party.

Â"The 10th anniversary, this opportunity, has slipped past. It's a real pity,Â" he said.

Wang Dan, a 1989 student leader who now lives in exile, said in a TV that there was even less freedom and respect for human rights in China now than a decade ago.

Police have questioned and detained about 130 dissidents ahead of the anniversary to head off trouble, the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said. Forty-two were still in custody.
©1999 CBS Worldwide Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed