Beijing, A livid China on Tuesday likened US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s criticism about the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protest to “deranged babbling” that would end up in the “trash can of history”.
As tensions increased between Washington and Beijing over a range of issues, a hawkish Pompeo asked China to reveal the number of people killed at a “pro-democracy” protest brutally clamp downed by the Chinese authorities in 1989.
Pompeo’s comments came on the 30th anniversary of the protest, an event that the Chinese government fears the repeat of and does not want its people to talk or read about it.
It was on June 4, 1989, when the Chinese Army tanked moved in at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, firing at pro-democracy protesters camping at the site since April that year.
Beijing to date has not given any figures of people being killed.
Pompeo’s statement was bound to rub Beijing the wrong way.
“The statement by Secretary Pompeo maliciously attacks China’s political system and denigrates China’s human rights and religious conditions,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Geng Shuang.
“Chinese people have seen hypocrisy and malice. These people have no position to criticize China. Any attempt to interfere in China’s domestic affairs and undermine its ability are doomed to fail.
“The deranged babbling of these people will only end up in the trash can of history. We advise these people to reflect upon themselves, manage their own affairs properly and stop smearing China or interfering in China’s domestic affairs,” Geng said in an oblique reference to Pompeo.
Pompeo had asked China to “make a full, a public accounting of those killed or missing to give comfort to the many victims of this dark chapter of history”.
He slammed China for gross violation of human rights in Xinjiang and said that “hopes have been dashed” of China becoming “a more open, tolerant society”.
Geng warned the US to “stop making mistakes one after another or else it will only become a laughing stock of the international community”.
