Tiananmen 19 years later

The date marks the 19th anniversary of the brutal crackdown on student and other demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989.

Hong Kong is the only place under Chinese sovereignty where protests are freely allowed on this important date.

This year, concern will also be expressed for the victims of the Sichuan earthquake.

• Blogging for China has translated an amazing set of first-person accounts of the incident: here, here and here. If you don't have time for all that, the one thing you can't miss is this transcription of a very fascinating speech made by the much-hated scholar He Xin (何新) to the 1990 graduating class of Beijing University, just one year after the incident.
• EastSouthWestNorth has a translation of a commentary in Hong Kong's Ming Pao by Ma Kafai. Also interesting are the results of a survey conducted by Hong Kong University of public perceptions of the incident. The Standard
  notes that way fewer people turned up on the streets this year to mark
  the anniversary and protestors held a silent march out of respect for
  those that died in the Sichuan earthquake. Recently released Ching Cheong of the Straits Times was one of the few who turned up for the march.
• Reuters points out
  that Bao Tong, the former aide to party leader Zhao Ziyang who was
  purged right after the incident, has called for the government to be as
  open about what happened 19 years ago as they have been with the
  Sichuan earthquake.
• Rebecca MacKinnon points us to this amazing interview with Ding Zilin back in 1999 when she was CNN's Beijing bureau chief. Ding is the leader of the Ti@n@nm3n M0thers organisation (blocked).
• The Peking Duck offers a heartfelt account of the incident which kept his eyes glued to the incident 19 years ago.
• China Digital Times has a translation of a blogpost by Beijing-based author Xu Xing (徐星) and prose written by Zhejiang poet He Jiawei (何家炜)
• Other good reads from the mainstream media:
  
  - Taiwan's Ma lauds rival China's openness on Tiananmen anniversary [IHT]
  
  - US urges China to release Tiananmen prisoners [AFP]
  
  - Tiananmen Square still an almost taboo topic [Sydney Morning Herald]
  
  - Security tight as memorials held over 1989 China crackdown [Channel News Asia]