US calls on China to free all Tiananmen prisoners

Washington, June 4 (ANI): The United States has called on China to release all prisoners still detained after Beijing's 1989 crackdown against protesters in Tiananmen Square.

The US State Department also called on China to 'provide a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing'.

"We renew our call for China to protect the universal human rights of all its citizens; release those who have been wrongfully detained, prosecuted, incarcerated, forcibly disappeared, or placed under house arrest, and end the ongoing harassment of human rights activists and their families," US State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said.

According to The BBC, Toner also called China's 'violent suppression' of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations a 'tragic loss of innocent lives'.

In 1989 the army shot dead hundreds of civilians rallying for democracy.

China considers the June 1989 events a counter-revolutionary revolt and defends its response.

A human rights group, the Dui Hua Foundation, estimates that fewer than a dozen activists arrested in the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown remain in jail.

Hundreds were rounded up at the time. (ANI)