With a megaphone held up to his thin face, which was in part masked by his large glasses, he rallied the pro-democracy crowds in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Little more than a month later, after a deadly crackdown by Chinese troops, he found himself on the top of the country’s most wanted list. Ultimately, early on June 4, 1989, Chinese tanks and soldiers crushed the movement, killing hundreds, and by some estimates more than 1,000. “To open fire on people, that was beyond our expectations.”Top of most wanted listHe recalls that he was “very surprised” once the bloodshed had ended to find himself atop China’s list of student protest leaders wanted by the police. But I got a lot of phone calls from my friends along Tiananmen Square ... so gradually I learned that more and more people died,” he says.

Source: The Nation Bangkok May 28, 2019 18:00 UTC