30 years after Tiananmen massacre, China maintains silence and censorship

China marked 30 years since the bloody Tiananmen crackdown on Tuesday with a wall of silence and extra security. 

Police checked the identification cards of every tourist and commuter leaving the subway near Tiananmen Square, the site of the pro-democracy protests that were brutally extinguished by tanks and soldiers on June 4, 1989.

In April 1989, weeks before Chinese leaders ordered a military assault to clear the protesters from central Beijing, tens of thousands of students got behind seven key demands – including a free press and freedom of speech, disclosure of leaders' assets and freedom to demonstrate. 

After seven weeks of demonstrations, the government deployed tanks and soldiers who chased and killed demonstrators and onlookers in the streets leading to Tiananmen Square on June 4.

Three decades since the crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square has increased government suppression of rights activism which has pushed the demonstrators' original goals further away than ever.

With the demands embodied in a 10-metre (33 ft) high "Goddess of Democracy" sculpture modelled on the Statue of Liberty and printed on thousands of leaflets, the students defied Beijing's declaration of martial law in calling for reforms to a government rife with corruption and a country shaken by growing inequality.   

The anniversary remains taboo in China and will not be marked by the government. 

China has also never provided a death toll of the 1989 violence, but rights groups and witnesses say it could run into the thousands.

Over the years, the party has censored any discussion of the protests and crackdown ensuring that people either never learn about what happened or fear detention if they dare discuss it openly.

Rights advocates say the ruling Communist Party has in the past 10 years suppressed a civil society nurtured by years of economic development.

Despite a constitution that promises freedom of speech, religion and assembly, large-scale political protests like those seen in 1989 are almost unthinkable in today's China, where even small demonstrations can be quickly snuffed out by police with sophisticated digital surveillance

Ahead of the anniversary, censors at Chinese internet companies say tools to detect and block content related to the 1989 crackdown have reached unprecedented levels of accuracy, aided by machine learning and voice and image recognition.

The quieting of dissident voices continues with string of activists recently detained or "disappeared" are six artists who had put up an exhibition titled "A Conscience Movement" in the eastern city of Nanjing.

"There is no reason to be optimistic for China now if you look at what's happening," another Tiananmen protest leader, Zhou Fengsuo, told AFP in New York.

"Even '1984', the novel, couldn't go that far."

(With inputs from agencies)