Protests outside Chinese consulate

4 Jun 2009, 12:53 pm   -   Source: AAP
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Protesters gather outside the Chinese consulate in Sydney to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre (AAP)

Protesters gather outside the Chinese consulate in Sydney to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre (AAP)

Protests have begun outside the Chinese consulate in Sydney to mark the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

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Protests have begun outside the Chinese consulate in Sydney to mark the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

A convoy of cars has sounded horns outside the building on Thursday.

The 17 cars, some decorated with the slogan reading "Never Forget June 4", had earlier left the Campsie home of former Chinese security guard Liyong Sun, who witnessed the massacre.

Other cars joined along the way before arriving at the consulate in Camperdown just before noon (AEST).

On June 4, 1999, soldiers of the Chinese army ruthlessly put down pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds of people.

Mr Sun said June 4 was always a sad day for him.

"I'm very angry about that time. On the evening of the third of June I saw the first injured person at Tiananmen Square," he told AAP.

"We never thought the Communist Party would use the regular army to kill civilians."

Mr Sun was imprisoned for seven years following the massacre, for issuing a public underground magazine called Democrat China, later renamed The Bell.

He joined the Tiananmen Square protest from April 7 to June 3, 1989.

On the evening of June 3, he felt bullets pass over his head.

"A lot of our Beijing civilians threw bricks at tanks," he said.

"The tanks moved rapidly at the civilians. They had to run away. The soldiers shot at us with sub-machine guns towards the street where we turned. We had to hide behind a building."

Mr Sun left the square at 9.30pm that evening.

He estimates 1,000 people were killed and between 5,000 and 10,000 injured.
 

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