On the eve of the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests on the 4th, bereaved families said they were denied permission to visit the graves of their relatives and spent the day under even tighter surveillance than in previous years. It is the first time Chinese authorities have forbidden families to visit the graves of Tiananmen victims on the anniversary.

According to Radio Free Asia (RFA) on the 4th, the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of bereaved families, announced on the 1st that the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau had sent notices to some families prohibiting visits and memorial ceremonies at Wanan Public Cemetery ahead of the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests. Although public commemorations for Tiananmen victims have been banned in China, families have been allowed to visit cemeteries under police supervision to read eulogies and pay their respects.

Zhang Xianling (89), who lost her 19-year-old son during the Tiananmen protests, told RFA, “This is the first time that even going to the cemetery has been banned.” The Tiananmen Mothers issued a statement criticizing the move, saying that barring them even from visiting the cemetery “violates human nature, the constitution, the law, and basic human rights.”

Families who have demanded for more than 30 years that the authorities uncover the truth about the Tiananmen crackdown said they were subjected to especially heavy surveillance this year. Yu Weijie, who lost her husband in the protests, told RFI that the monitoring personnel, usually deployed from mid-May, were stationed from mid-April this year. She said, “The Tiananmen Mothers are increasingly elderly and fewer in number, yet surveillance has been tightened.” The Tiananmen Mothers also stated on their website that their annual Lunar New Year gathering was, for the first time, disallowed late last year.

Dissidents and human rights activists living outside Beijing also received warnings related to the Tiananmen anniversary. According to RFA, citing an associate of Xu Guang, a human rights activist who played a leading role in the Tiananmen protests and was released from prison last month, democracy advocate Chen Suqing in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, and Xu were warned by the authorities not to “climb over the wall” on June 4 and not to give interviews to foreign media. “Climbing over the wall” refers to using a virtual private network (VPN) to access overseas websites.

There is speculation that the release last December by the New York Times (NYT) of video from the trial of Xu Qinxian (who died in 2021), who served prison time for refusing orders to carry out the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, has influenced the authorities to adopt even stricter censorship measures. According to the NYT, at a secret trial held in China in 1990, the former commander said, “Personally, I did not want to participate (in the armed suppression),” and, “I did not agree (with the order to suppress).” The video has recorded more than one million views on YouTube.

Wang Dan, a leader of the Tiananmen protests and now a historian residing in Taiwan, told RFI, “The Chinese government’s stepped-up crackdown this year on the ‘Tiananmen Mothers’ and their activities reflects a decline in confidence in its governing capacity.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the 3rd (local time) issued a statement titled “37th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre,” saying, “We remember their lives and honor their legacy,” and, “No amount of censorship can erase the past.”

AFP noted that the statement came less than three weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a summit. Reuters assessed that, although such statements are issued annually, this one is likely to serve as a pledge to Chinese dissidents and democracy supporters.

Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, said at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regular press briefing on the 4th, regarding remarks by Secretary Rubio, “China urges the United States to take concrete actions to deliver on its commitments,” and, “Stop interfering in China’s internal affairs under the pretext of democracy and human rights.”