Tiananmen mums blast Xi Jinping for inaction on political reform
Open letter accuses president of taking party backwards and failing to account for '89 events
More than 100 members of the Tiananmen Mothers support group issued an open letter yesterday saying they had been disappointed by President Xi Jinping's public speeches and his reluctance to tackle political reform.
In the letter, headlined "Hope fades as despair draws near", the group said Xi "has mixed together the things that were most unpopular and most in need of repudiation" during the eras of former paramount leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping . The letter was released yesterday through the New York-based group Human Rights in China.
Deng was the leader who oversaw the bloody crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 in which hundreds of young protesters were killed. The Tiananmen Mothers comprises parents of those victims.
"We also have not seen [Xi] criticise in the slightest or make anyone accountable for the three decades of Deng-style 'lame reform'," the group's letter said. "What we see, precisely, are giant steps backwards towards Maoist orthodoxy.
"This has caused those individuals who originally harboured hopes in him carrying out political reform to fall into sudden disappointment and despair," the letter said.
Professor Ding Zilin , the founder of the group, said they had once hoped that Xi would follow in the footsteps of his late father Xi Zhongxun , a reformist leader, and press ahead with political reform.
