Renmin University philosophy professor and founder of the Tiananmen Mothers
University students and citizens marching with banners in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, during the May 1989 demonstrations.
he locked the apartment door on June 3 to keep her seventeen-year-old son inside. He climbed out the window.1
On June 3, 1989, Ding Zilin begged her son Jiang Jielian to stay home as troops entered Beijing.
He slipped out of their apartment and rode his bicycle two miles east to the intersection at Muxidi.
Shortly after eleven at night, soldiers opened fire with assault rifles. A bullet pierced Jiang Jielian through the heart.
Residents carried him on a flatbed tricycle to Beijing Children's Hospital. He was dead when he arrived.
While the state denied any civilian deaths at Tiananmen, Ding Zilin began visiting families of the dead across Beijing.
Together with other bereaved parents, she formed the Tiananmen Mothers and verified over two hundred victims by name.
“We cannot let our children die in vain, nameless and uncounted.”
The regime erased June Fourth from every textbook. One mother wrote the names back in by hand.