19 years ago today...

... was when Ali Khameini was elected the new supreme spiritual leader of Iran right after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, but it was also part of a significant event in Chinese history that for now still remains too taboo to talk about. Here are a collection of stories from around the internet which are well worth a read:

• Blogging for China has translated an amazing set of first-person accounts of the incident: here, here and here. If you don't have time for all that, the one thing you can't miss is this transcription of a very fascinating speech made by the much-hated scholar He Xin (何新) to the 1990 graduating class of Beijing University, just one year after the incident.
• EastSouthWestNorth has a translation of a commentary in Hong Kong's Ming Pao by Ma Kafai. Also interesting are the results of a survey conducted by Hong Kong University of public perceptions of the incident. The Standard notes that way fewer people turned up on the streets this year to mark the anniversary and protestors held a silent march out of respect for those that died in the Sichuan earthquake. Recently released Ching Cheong of the Straits Times was one of the few who turned up for the march.
• Reuters points out that Bao Tong, the former aide to party leader Zhao Ziyang who was purged right after the incident, has called for the government to be as open about what happened 19 years ago as they have been with the Sichuan earthquake.
• Rebecca MacKinnon points us to this amazing interview with Ding Zilin back in 1999 when she was CNN's Beijing bureau chief. Ding is the leader of the Ti@n@nm3n M0thers organisation (blocked).
• The Peking Duck offers a heartfelt account of the incident which kept his eyes glued to the incident 19 years ago.
• China Digital Times has a translation of a blogpost by Beijing-based author Xu Xing (徐星) and prose written by Zhejiang poet He Jiawei (何家炜)
• Other good reads from the mainstream media:
  - Taiwan's Ma lauds rival China's openness on Tiananmen anniversary [IHT]
  - US urges China to release Tiananmen prisoners [AFP]
  - Tiananmen Square still an almost taboo topic [Sydney Morning Herald]
  - Security tight as memorials held over 1989 China crackdown [Channel News Asia]

Photo from Natmandu