China, Hong Kong go to exhaustive lengths to scrub bloody Tiananmen Square memories on 4 June anniversary

Beijing, China: There was heightened security around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square Saturday, anniversary of the bloody 1989 crackdown, while police in Hong Kong warned people not to gather as China strives to remove all reminders of the events of 4 June. Discussion of the crackdown is highly sensitive to China’s communist leadership. It has gone to exhaustive lengths to erase Tiananmen from collective memory, omitting it from history textbooks and censoring online discussion. On 4 June, 1989, the government sent troops and tanks to break up peaceful protests, crushing a weeks-long wave of demonstrations calling for political change and curbs on…