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A UK cable on the TNan Men Square Massacre from June 5, 1989.

History is as often as it is anything else about remembering the things that we might collectively wish to choose to forget, or worse yet, remembering things that others, especially those in power, might wish us to forget.

It's one of the main jobs of historians and those who study history to do their best then to not allow that to happen, to ensure that even if history is

ultimately written by the winner, that they're at least not allowed to burn all the books

or bury the scholars in opposition. 30 years ago, in 1989, between April 15th and June

4th, the capital city of China, Beijing, was gripped by mass protests led by university

students, factory workers, government reformists,

and regular everyday citizens who wanted substantive, democratic change to their country's government.

But on June 4th, after weeks of buildup, the world watched in horror as the Communist Party of China,

led then by Deng Xiaoping, Li Peng, and Yang Shakakun, among others, as anti-performist hardliners within

the party, ordered that the People's Liberation Army and the People's Armed Police be sent in

to the center point of the month-and-a-half-long protest, the open square in front of the ancient

forbidden city main gate, called Tiananmen, or the Gate of Heavenly Peace, to break up what they viewed as a dangerous

anti-party activity by force. The results were as tragic, horrific, and unforgettable as could be,

with images and video of the brutal crackdown sent across the world. Yet for much of the subsequent

three decades, the ruling party of China has enforced increasingly stringent measures on its own populace to limit, and even to erase entirely the memory of the subsequent three decades, the ruling party of China has enforced increasingly stringent measures on its own populace to limit and even to erase entirely the memory of June 4, 1989,

from the collective memory of the Chinese citizenry. Yearly, the already stringently censored

internet within China is locked down even further, and sensitive terminology is heavily monitored

and deleted off of social media.

People deemed dissident or troublemakers are put under observation and even arrested and tortured.

Even when foreign websites such as Google and Wikipedia were allowed to operate within China,

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