The 25th Anniversary of China’s ruthless crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square is less than a month away.  Authorities have arrested several activists who attended a meeting on calling for an investigation into the painful chapter.

Among the rights activists and attorneys placed under criminal detention was Pu Zhiqiang, a prominent free-speech lawyer who has represented many dissidents including artist Ai Weiwei.  Coworkers say he was detained on a charge of “causing a disturbance”.  Pu is unusual among dissidents in that he was featured in the state media campaign against the system of forced labor, which the government has abolished.

“Pu is very influential and has a following in the mainstream audience,” said Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch.

Others arrested include a professor with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a teacher at the Beijing Film Academy. 

On 4 June 1989, China sent the People’s Liberation Army into Tiananmen Square to clear thousands of student protesters who’d been camped out for weeks, demanding political reforms to ease the oppression left over from the Mao Zedong era.  The crackdown was bloody, and there is no official count of the civilian deaths – some say hundreds, some say thousands.  Beijing police say workers, professors, students from elementary through university were among the victims.  The youngest was nine years old.

“The government's pressures to forget June Fourth have caused the day slowly to erode in public memory,” Pu Zhiqiang wrote in a 2006 essay for the New York Review of Books.  “Each year the Tiananmen Mothers seem more isolated, and the massacre seems more a topic to be avoided in daily conversation.”