By contrast, the plaza itself in Chinese capital Beijing was patrolled by police, with an authoritarian regime still gagging its people from publicly mourning the hordes shot dead in the June 3-4 massacre of 1989.

China's commmunist rulers, who are preparing to host the Olympic Games in August, will not welcome any reminder of the atrocity in which Chinese troops fired on protesting students, killing an estimated 2,000 people.

Nineteen years later, Hong Kong is the only place under Chinese sovereignty where protests are freely allowed on the landmark date.
But local Amnesty International campaigners yesterday joined a world-wide remembrance of the killings.

There were candlelit vigils in America last night and rallys in Scotland, Germany and England.

In London 10,000 red roses were laid on the streets.

The flowers are a symbol chosen by the mothers who cannot mourn the children killed in Tiananmen without fear of persecution.

Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty's Northern Ireland director, said: "We want China to honour its pledge that human rights abuses would end in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.

"As well as giving out the symbolic roses, we're getting passers-by to sign postcards addressed to the acting mayor of Beijing.

"They carry a message appealing for human freedoms, in an attempt to get permission for the Tiananmen Mothers' Group to publicly air their grief."

China's communist leaders portray the protest as an anti-government riot and have never offered a full account of the brutal clampdown.
The demonstration was sparked by the death of the reform-minded party leader Hu Yaobang.

For six weeks college students occupied the square to demand freedom, democracy and an end to government corruption. They danced to Bob Dylan songs and discussed the work of radical writers.

Some have objected to resurrecting the massacre at a time when China has faced crises, such as the Sichuan earthquake which killed 70,000 people.