Tiananmen security tight on 20th anniversary

BEIJING — Police ringed China's iconic Tiananmen Square on Thursday as the government blocked any attempts to mark the 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

An exiled protest leader — famous for publicly haranguing one of China's top leaders 20 years ago — was also blocked from returning home to confront officials over what he called the "June 4 massacre."

Foreign journalists were barred from the vast square as uniformed and plainclothes police stood guard across the vast plaza that was the epicenter of the student-led movement that was crushed by the military on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

Security officials also blocked foreign TV camera operators and photographers from covering the raising of China's national flag, which happens at dawn every day.

The heavy security moves come after government censors shut down social networking and image-sharing Web sites such as Twitter and Flickr, blacked out CNN when it airs stories on Tiananmen. Dissidents were confined to their homes or forced to leave Beijing, part of sweeping efforts to prevent online debate or organized commemorations of the anniversary.

In another sign of the government's unwavering hard-line stance toward the protests, the second most-wanted student leader from 1989 said he had been denied entry to the southern Chinese territory of Macau.

Wu'er Kaixi, in exile since fleeing China after the crackdown, traveled to Macau on Wednesday to turn himself in to authorities in a bid to return home. Immigration officers pulled him aside and demanded he fly back to Taiwan, something he vowed to resist.

"I'm just waiting. I'm guessing they're waiting for instructions from their superiors," Wu'er told The Associated Press by phone, adding he was being detained in a small room guarded by a lone official at the Macau airport's immigration offices.

"If they disagree with my behavior, they can arrest me. I can accept that," he said. "But I won't let them deport me."

Wu'er rose to fame in 1989 as a pajama-clad hunger striker yelling at then-premier Li Peng at a televised meeting during the protests. Named No. 2 on the government's list of 21 most-wanted student leaders after the crackdown, he escaped and now lives in exile in the self-ruled island of Taiwan. An attempt to return home in 2004 was rebuffed when he was deported from the Chinese territory of Hong Kong.