Beijing public security barred members of the Tiananmen Mothers from making their annual Wan'an cemetery vigil for the first time in 37 years, an unprecedented escalation on the eve of the June 4 anniversary, with Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council calling on the PRC to face the historical record and exiled student leader Wuer Kaixi using a Tokyo press conference to urge Japan to drop "appeasement" toward China. The cemetery ban surfaced through Radio Free Asia reporting carried by PTS in Taipei, and the Hong Kong Free Press reported plainclothes officers separately surrounded two performance artists in Causeway Bay on the same eve.
What is new this year? The first-time prohibition against the Tiananmen Mothers' graveside vigil at Wan'an cemetery is the year's most concrete escalation in mainland China itself, the PTS coverage reported. Some of the bereaved-family group's members received public-security notifications barring them from attending the cemetery and from holding any commemoration ritual, ending a 37-year unbroken practice.
How did Tiananmen Mothers respond? 88-year-old member Zhang Xianling read aloud a memorial text declaring that bereaved families "must speak the truth, refuse to forget, seek justice, and call to conscience," CNA reported in its cross-strait file. Zhang's framing — sacrifice as "a wound carved in the heart that will not fade" — anchored the diaspora-side commemoration even as the cemetery itself was closed.
What did Taiwan say? Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council issued an evening statement calling on Beijing to "face the historical facts of the June 4 incident" and to respond to "public demands for fair justice, basic rights and civic participation," CNA reported. The MAC framed early political-system reform as the path forward, with the Liberty Times carrying the same statement in its politics file.
What did Wuer Kaixi say in Tokyo? Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, Wuer Kaixi urged Japan to abandon what he called appeasement toward China and to use its weight as a major Asian democracy to defend freedom and democracy from the front, CNA International reported. The Tokyo venue and the Japan-specific ask gave the 37th-anniversary press conference a different geometry than the diaspora's usual Washington and Brussels tour.
What is Hong Kong's anniversary look like? Plainclothes police surrounded Sanmu Chan with a red string at the Lockhart Road/East Point Road intersection in Causeway Bay, and stopped Chan Mei-tung with golden-question-mark balloons, the Hong Kong Free Press reported. Causeway Bay was the pre-NatSec-law site of Hong Kong's June 4 vigil.
