«Thirty years ago, heavily armed troops imposing martial law slaughtered unarmed students and citizens with machine guns and tanks," said the Tiananmen Mothers group's open letter, timed to coincide with the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC). "But ever since, the authorities have been rewriting history."
Weeks of student-led mass protests on Tiananmen Square, symbolised by the "Goddess of Democracy" effigy, were styled a "counterrevolutionary rebellion" and "political turmoil" by the ruling Chinese Communist Party after late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping sent in the tanks. Ever since they lost loved ones in the bloodshed, the letter said, the group's members have been among the most surveilled citizens in China, often kept under house arrest during politically sensitive times, and followed by police.
