2ND LD: Police keep watch at Tiananmen Square on 18th anniversary

BEIJING, June 4 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING COMMENTS)

Police kept watch at portals to Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Monday, the 18th anniversary of the military crackdown on democracy protests, stopping people and checking their bags in an apparent attempt to prevent any commemorative demonstrations.

At one point in the late morning, police were seen trying to stop a person, believed to be an activist, from distributing material in the square.

The person was quickly led away and put into a police van while officers removed pieces of paper that lay scattered in the area. It was not clear what message was on the paper.

Thousands of holidaymakers, meanwhile, walked around or stopped to take pictures in the square in the heart of Beijing, where Chinese troops opened fire on protestors in 1989.

''I don't think the number of policemen is particularly high today, although there are more of them here than usual,'' said a 42-year-old woman selling drinks and snacks near the war heroes' monument in the center of the square.

''Yes, I know what day it is,'' she said when asked whether she knew of the Tiananmen crackdown, but declined to discuss the issue further.

At the entrances to the square, policemen stopped people carrying heavier bags, making them spread out the contents on the pavement for them to see.

In the past, protestors have tried furling political banners in the square as part of commemorative demonstration.

While police vehicles circled the area or parked in the margins, officers were not seen visibly interfering with clusters of out-of-town Chinese wearing matching-colored caps and foreigners with their Chinese tour guides.

China maintains that the Tiananmen killings were justified, calling the pro-democracy demonstrations a ''political disturbance'' that needed to be quelled. Open discussion on the incident, which sent shock waves overseas, remains taboo in the country.

A Chinese human rights website said that among those who were arrested in 1989 for the incident, 13 were still in prison in Beijing alone.

''We demand that the Chinese government immediately release the political prisoners,'' said a statement on the Chinese Human Rights Defenders website, which listed the names of the 13.

A separate international rights group recently said China has ''wholly failed'' to account for the killings, and that Beijing is undermining its own image ahead of the Olympic Games in 2008 by not making public a list of those who died or went to prison.

''Beijing -- and by extension, the 2008 Olympic Games -- will remain tarnished by this legacy until the Chinese government provides a complete and truthful account of what happened in June 1989,'' Human Rights Watch said in a statement dated Friday.

A 45-year-old woman who witnessed the killings in 1989 said that she fears the memory of the incident is now fading.

''The students now are taught about the soldiers who died, but not about the students and citizens who were massacred,'' said the woman who asked not to be identified. ''I feel that a lot of people just don't know about what happened anymore.''

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