US urges China to free Tiananmen activists

The US government has urged China to free all those still in prison 23 years after Beijing's 1989 crackdown against protesters in Tiananmen Square. "We renew our call for China to protect the universal human rights of all its citizens; release those who have been wrongfully detained, prosecuted, incarcerated, forcibly disappeared, or placed under house arrest; and end the ongoing harassment of human rights activists and their families," US State Department Deputy spokesman Mark Toner said. The State Department message also called on China to "provide a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing". He called China's "violent suppression" of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations a "tragic loss of innocent lives". Beijing consider the June 1989 events a counter-revolutionary revolt and defend their response. In 1989 the army shot dead hundreds of civilians rallying for democracy. A human rights group, the Dui Hua Foundation, estimates that fewer than a dozen activists arrested in the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown remain in jail. Hundreds were rounded up at the time.