Chinese police have for the first time raised the possibility of compensation for those killed in the crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests, families of victims said yesterday.
Police have met twice with relatives of one victim beginning in February, the Tiananmen Mothers said, in a possible sign that the government is changing its view on the brutal June 4 crackdown in the heart of Beijing.
“They only raised the question of how much to pay, emphasizing that this was meant for that individual case and not for the families in the group as a whole,” the group said in an annual open letter to mark the June 4 anniversary.
However, the letter said police did not discuss a formal apology for the killings or a public account of who ordered the shootings — two of the group’s long-standing demands.
“The Tiananmen Mothers have repeatedly appealed to the government over the past 16 years for dialogue, yet government authorities have ignored us,” said the letter, posted on the group’s Web site. “This year, the silence was finally broken.”
The letter was signed by 127 members of the group, which is made up of relatives of those killed in the crackdown. It gave no further details of the discussions.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, are believed to have died when the government sent in tanks and soldiers to clear Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3 to June 4, violently crushing six weeks of pro-democracy protests.
The letter acknowledged that the motives behind the government’s apparent overture were unclear. It noted that the approach came amid what the group called the harshest crackdown on dissent since 1989, carried out this year as Beijing has moved to prevent unrest similar to that which has swept the Arab world.
The Beijing Public Security Bureau refused to comment on the letter or the reported compensation discussions.
The Tiananmen Mothers have documented the killing of 203 people during the crackdown, all of whom were peaceful demonstrators or citizens, the letter said.
The letter also urged the government to open direct talks with the Tiananmen Mothers, instead of discussing the compensation issue through police intermediaries.
“Our door to dialogue with the government has remained open at all times,” the letter said. “If there are discussions, then they should be real discussions, to resolve issues point by point.”
Meanwhile, the State Archives Administration yesterday cracked opened its secretive doors, but kept the lid on some of the most painful parts of its history like the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen crackdown to protect “privacy and reputations.”
The archives, hidden down an alley in central Beijing, holds more than 100 million pages of documents, including the ceasefire agreement to end the Korean War and personal letters from Mao Zedong (毛澤東). However, more than half of them are considered secret.
“According to the law ... files of important interest on national security, defense and foreign affairs are not suitable to be opened up,” the administration’s head, Yang Dongquan (楊冬權), told reporters on a government-organized visit.
Other areas off-limits were the files on “various disputes, including ones of ethnicity, religion and property,” he said.
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