37 Years After Tiananmen: DPP Demands Beijing Face Historical Truth and Release Jimmy Lai

On the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has issued a formal statement demanding that the Chinese government confront its historical record and acknowledge its wrongdoing.

The DPP called on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to cease its persecution of pro-democracy activists and citizens — including those connected to the June 4th crackdown — and to immediately release Jimmy Lai (黎智英), founder of Next Digital (壹傳媒), along with all dissidents it has imprisoned without justification.

The party further demanded that Beijing halt what it described as the suppression of democracy and human rights through "uncivilized and barbaric means," stop crushing democracy with tanks, and abandon its export of authoritarianism and ideological expansion toward Taiwan and countries around the world.

The DPP's statement recalled that 37 years ago, countless brave Chinese citizens and young students took to the streets across the country in pursuit of democratic reform and political freedoms. Rather than engage with those demands, the CCP responded with tanks and military force.

Thirty-seven years on, the events of June 4th have never been officially rehabilitated. The date itself has effectively become unspeakable within China's public discourse. The DPP expressed regret that the Chinese government has not only refused to reckon with that chapter of its history, but has intensified its authoritarian controls and surveillance of its population — pushing ever further down that path in the years since.

​In recent years, the DPP noted, the CCP's means of suppressing speech and surveilling people have continued to escalate, causing China's human rights situation to continuously deteriorate.​

The statement pointed to the sentencing of Jimmy Lai — handed a 20-year prison term — as emblematic of a broader pattern. According to the DPP, the CCP has deployed national security legislation and other coercive instruments in Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang to suppress dissent, violate human rights, impose mass surveillance, and enforce cultural assimilation.

These measures, the party argued, run counter to universally recognized values and represent a serious harm to the civilization of the world.

Against this backdrop, the DPP emphasized its commitment to defending Taiwan's democratic system and rejecting what it characterized as Beijing's united front strategy — framing unification in the language of peace while pursuing political absorption. The party stated that Taiwan would firmly resist any unilateral attempt by China to forcibly transform democratic Taiwan into "China's Taiwan."

The statement closed with a reference to Lai's own writings, in which he described the Tiananmen crackdown as a turning point in his life — "like a mother calling me toward the light in the darkness." The DPP expressed hope that Lai and others who have pursued democratic ideals would regain their freedom, and that the people of China would one day bid farewell to the darkness and gloom, and see the light of dawn.