From: Human Rights Watch
June 5, 2014
THE WEEK IN RIGHTS
Newsweek, along with many other news organizations, had rented a room in the Beijing Hotel, a high-rise building that looked over Tiananmen Square, to watch the protests. After the crackdown, we couldn’t get back to that hotel – authorities had cordoned off the street to mop up the blood and make sure no protesters could regroup. When the street finally oPhoto credit by ©1989 Private
“pened several days later, my colleague Melinda Liu and I went back to the hotel to check out, and the hotel tried to charge us for the days we couldn’t reach it. My colleague asked for a discount as access to the hotel was dicey “due to what happened in Tiananmen Square.” In retort, the man behind the counter said, “Nothing happened in Tiananmen Square.””
Human Rights Watch deputy executive director for external relations, Carroll Bogert, who covered the Tiananmen protests as a reporter for Newsweek, talks about how China has been shaped by the horrific events of those days 25 years ago.