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Days before the historic student protests at Tiananmen Square rocked the world, culminating in the slaughter of hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators, the Goddess of Democracy was unveiled in the heart of the ancient square. Standing just 10 meters tall, she rose up silent and defiant before the Great Hall of the People, where only days before Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the architect of glasnost, was forced to enter via the back door because the demonstrators, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, jammed the square, barring his entrance, and deeply embarrassing the Beijing government, which was hosting the first Sino-Soviet summit in 30 years. Crafted out of plaster and chicken wire, inspired in form and substance by the Statue of Liberty, the grand goddess came to embody the will of the people, expressing their chimerical hope for democracy in China.

It was not to be, of course

Four days later, after the negotiated withdrawal of thousands of protestors from the square, 2000 student hunger-strikers still remained. And on the night of June 3rd at 11:45 p.m., the armored tanks of the People’s Liberation Army rolled in, firing at will on the students in the warm June dark.

By morning, the democracy movement in China was dead. And its student leaders were on the run, hunted like dangerous prey by their own government. In Tiananmen Square, the Goddess of Democracy lay in ruins, crushed by tanks tracks, a bundle of smashed plaster and chicken wire. And as the world stood by stunned, replaying again and again the video image of a single brave man blocking an advancing column of tanks in the smoky night, it wondered how so much had suddenly gone so wrong.

Naturally, the Beijing government justified their violent actions, declaring that their conduct had been lawful and necessary to put down a “counter-revolutionary riot”. But in the minds of the student leaders who survived the events of that night, the government had committed nothing less than mass murder in the name of dictatorship.

Since that fateful night, ten years ago, Tiananmen Square has become synonymous with the struggle for democracy in China. Indeed, that event more than any other has shaped the lives of a generation of Chinese students, who now live in exile around the world, hoping for the day when they can return to a free China.

On Thursday, June 3rd, the Free China Movement will sponsor two commemorative events in front of the Chinese Embassy: a noon reading of the names of those student victims gunned down in Tiananmen Square, and a 7 pm candlelight memorial service. In light of demonstrable human rights violations occurring inside China today, and the historic rise of the first-ever China Democracy Party, advancing the cause of freedom against all odds, it is critical that American citizens show their support for the quest of one-fifth of the world’s population to achieve democracy now. Please join us. For information, contact the Free China Movement at (202) 244-9479.

Timothy Cooper is the International Director of the Free China Movement.

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