Tibetans worldwide have expressed support and solidarity with the Chinese democracy movement on the 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Chinese authorities have clamped down heavily in Beijing, rounding up dissidents, blocking internet sites and placing a massive security cordon around the square itself.

In a press statement on Monday the Tibetan Women’s Association stated that “Exile Tibetans stand in solidarity with the Chinese democracy movement and express support for their demand for freedom, human rights and democracy in China.”

According to Students for a Free Tibet’s Executive Director, Lhadon Tethong:

“Tibetans know the brutal nature of the Chinese government, and we stand in solidarity with the tens of thousands of Chinese students, labor organizers, and pro-democracy advocates whose struggle for an open and democratic China was violently crushed by the tanks in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago.”

Chinese authorities imposed an information blackout ahead of the anniversary, blocking access to popular networking websites such as Twitter and BBC television reports inside China. Tiananmen Square itself has been sealed off.

According to the ABC’s Beijing Correspondent Stephen McDonell, efforts to suppress information about the anniversary and intimidate today’s democracy activists have been so fierce that he expects that today in Tianmanen Square “will pass like any other normal day”. Nonetheless, giving rare cause for limited optimism to Chinese democracy activists, one state-controlled English language newspaper published an unusually bold article acknowledging the sensitivity of the anniversary.

Among numerous commemorative events planned in Australia, members of the Chinese community in Melbourne are gathering in City Square and providing white roses for people to place in rememberence. Early this morning Amnesty International hung a banner from a hot air balloon over Melbourne reading “time for justice” in English and Mandarin.

According to Amnesty International, 1000 people were killed and many more injured on 4 June 1989 and the days that followed. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has today urged China to publicly account for those killed in the suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests 20 years ago.

Read a statement by the Dalai Lama
Read an opinion peace by Australian Chinese dissident and Tibet supporter Chin Jin