April 21, 1989
Six days after the death of Hu Yaobang, the deposed reform-minded leader of the Chinese Communist Party, some 100,000 students gathered at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to commemorate Hu and voice their discontent with China’s authoritative communist government. By mid-May more than a million people filled the square; the government formally declared martial law in Beijing, and troops and tanks were called in to disperse the dissidents. Protests continued until June 4, when the army forcibly cleared Tiananmen Square and Beijing’s streets, killing hundreds of demonstrators and arresting thousands of protesters and other suspected dissidents.
