Tiananmen mothers criticise Xi Jinping for lack of reforms
Criticising President Xi Jinping for not ushering in reforms, an overseas group, The Tiananmen Mothers has said in an open letter that widespread loss of trust in the government has pervaded China. Sutirtho Patranobis reports.
Criticising President Xi Jinping for not ushering in reforms, an overseas group, The Tiananmen Mothers has said in an open letter that widespread loss of trust in the government has pervaded China.
The group comprises of more than 100 family members whose relatives were killed in the Tiananmen Square crackdown after students rose up in support of government reforms in 1989.
The group said in the three months since the new government took over "hope has gradually disappeared, despair is gradually approaching."
They said in an open letter in Chinese that China's leaders have never been reformers.
China's leaders, it added, "come one after another, as if through a revolving door; and as they move forward, they become ever more distant and outrageous, causing a universal feeling of despair to descend on the people from all sides."
"What we see, precisely, are giant steps backwards towards Maoist orthodoxy," it said. "This has caused those individuals who originally harboured hopes in him in carrying out political reform to fall into sudden disappointment and despair."
"To this day, all our efforts have been in vain, we have received not a single response from the government," said the letter, posted on an overseas rights group's website ahead of the 24th anniversary of the crackdown on June 4.
The letter added that Chinese society was "filled with a general sense of despair."
"Some commentators have pointed out: This community has no kind of trust, and who is our trust. Leaders, we do not believe that leaders are saying we do not believe. Industry associations, we do not believe it. Newspapers, we do not believe," the letter said.
According to agency reports, China's government has so far provided no official toll for the repression, condemned throughout the world and led to the temporary isolation of Beijing on the international stage.
"Unofficial estimates of the numbers killed range from around 200 to more than 3,000. The Tiananmen Mothers said in the letter they believed the higher figure was accurate," news agency AFP reported.
The Tiananmen Mothers group said last year that one of its members, the father of a 22-year-old man killed by soldiers during the crackdown, had committed suicide, leaving a note that detailed his continued distress over the killing.
"We will never give up, never stop, until June Fourth is finally reassessed, and the souls of the victims rest in peace," the letter said.