‘Repent’ for Tiananmen

China must "sincerely repent" for the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square three decades ago, Taiwan said yesterday, as a Chinese newspaper said nobody in China was interested in dragging up the past.

Today marks 30 years since Chinese troops opened fire to end the student-led unrest. Chinese authorities ban any public commemoration of the event on the mainland and have never released a full death toll. Estimates from human rights groups and witnesses range from several hundred to several thousand.

"China has to sincerely repent for the June 4 incident and proactively push for democratic reforms," Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement likely to infuriate China.

"We earnestly admonish the Chinese authorities to face up to the historical mistake, and sincerely apologise as soon as possible."

The council said Beijing had been telling lies to cover up the events of 1989 and distorting the truth.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, asked about Taiwan's statement, said the great achievements since the People's Republic of China was founded 70 years ago "fully prove that the development path we have chosen is completely correct".

China's widely read tabloid the Global Times said in an editorial on the website of its English-language edition that June 4 had "immunised China against turmoil".

"Merely afflicting China once, the incident has not become a long-term nightmare for the country," the paper, published by the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily, said.

"It has become a faded historical event, rather than an actual entanglement," it added, blasting dissidents and those outside the country who keep talking about it.