Tiananmen Square

As public spaces go, it's not a pretty sight: a vast plain of concrete bounded by a mishmash of architecture, including a mammoth Stalinist government building and a three-story Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. But as symbols go, Tiananmen Square is one of the most recognizable on Earth, 100 acres spread out under the heavy-lidded gaze of Mao Tse-tung and featured in countless cutaway shots by filmmakers needing a quick and easy emblem of China.

In the first whisper of a comment since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 48 hours earlier, imprisoned Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo sent word through his wife Sunday that he would dedicate the award to activists killed during 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square, according to a human rights organization. The writer's wife, who has been held under house arrest, was escorted by police to Jinzhou Prison in northern China's Liaoning province where she was able to speak with her husband.

Eight dissidents from northeastern China have appealed to the government to compensate those imprisoned and the families of those killed in the Tiananmen Square crackdown 11 years ago, a human rights group said Saturday. In an open letter to President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji, the dissidents said the government was "absolutely wrong" to crush the pro-democracy protests centered on Tiananmen Square, said the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

A democracy activist who helped organize the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests was released by China and arrived in the United States on Thursday. It was the third time in a week that Beijing acted on a case after lobbying from Washington, in what some believe are efforts to stave off a possible United Nations resolution condemning China on human rights issues. Wang Youcai, 37, a physicist, was given medical parole, said John Kamm, executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation, a rights group.

Hong Kong activists who plan a protest to mark the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown vowed that the colony's hand-over to China will not stop them from commemorating the event in the future. Campaigner Szeto Wah said activists plan to hold their traditional vigil June 4 in memory of the pro-democracy protesters who died in Beijing.

Police have detained a former student leader of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests, apparently to forestall any effort to mark the 10th anniversary of the crackdown on the demonstrations, a human rights group said. Police took Jiang Qisheng away from his Beijing home and searched it for two hours, the Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said. Jiang was a former doctoral student at People's University.

Xu Jiatun, a former high-ranking Chinese Communist Party official living in exile in Orange County, has joined an appeal to the party congress meeting in Beijing to reverse the government report condemning the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square. Another letter, purportedly written by ex-official Zhao Ziyang, called for a "reassessment" of the Tiananmen incident, in which hundreds, if not thousands, were killed by the army.

Hundreds of people took to the streets of Hong Kong to demand that China drop its condemnation of the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. The demonstrators chanted slogans as they held aloft signs reading, "Seek accountability for the massacre" and "Reverse the verdict on the June 4 incident," as the crackdown is known. In Beijing today, relatives of the slain renewed calls for compensation and a reassessment of the event.

In watching Richard Gordon and Carma Hinton's superb three-hour documentary, you have to wonder whether without Beijing's vast Tiananmen Square, capable of holding 1.5 million people, the seven-week, student-led demonstration calling for democracy that ended June 4, 1989 in a bloody massacre could have ever been launched. Gordon and Hinton were able to bring alive a historic event (KCET Sunday at 2 p.m.).

Two California college students expelled from China for joining a Falun Gong demonstration by 35 visitors in Tiananmen Square this week declared in Santa Monica on Friday they had gone to Beijing to demonstrate foreign support for the Chinese people. "I went to China to give people a chance for freedom, freedom from the lies they are forced to hear," said Brad Carson, a 20-year-old Sonoma State University student from Lake Forest.