Uyghur’s still protesting and being killed in China.

From Democracy Now!:

New protests have erupted in China’s western Xinjiang region, two days after at least 156 people were killed and over 1,000 wounded in the country’s worst ethnic violence in decades. On Tuesday, some 200 ethnic Uyghurs–mostly women–took to the streets to protest over the mass arrest of more than 1,400 people following Sunday’s clashes. Later, hundreds of ethnic Han Chinese marched through the streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province. The two sides blame each other for the outbreak of violence.

The DN link includes an interview with Nury Turkel, a Uyghur American Attorney. He is the co-founder of the Uyghur Human Rights Project and past president of the Uyghur American Association. Here is video of the unrest and a report by Amy Goodman.

20 years ago-Tanks and Tiananmen Square

This picture is recognizable by most everyone. It is a student facing off with a shitload of Chinese tanks. It is simply known as ‘Tankman’. It was taken by Jeff Widener.

I remember Tiananmen Sq and the bloody crackdown by the Chinese government. I watched it on CNN all day and night. I got online and tried to find live shots of what was going on.

June 3rd and 4th was the massacre. There is a good pbs timeline and a documentary entitled Tank Man on the entire protest which started in April and ended June 5th, which was the day the Tankman photo was captured by Jeff Widener. There is also another documentary on the subject which you can rent or buy entitled The Gate of Heavenly Peace. A section regarding the massacre can be watched here.

There has never been an accounting of how many protesters and bystanders were killed that night.