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BEIJING (AFP) – Security was tight in Beijing’s central Tiananmen Square on Tuesday ahead of the 19th anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests that left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead.

Police vans were circling on and around the square, the focus of major bloodshed nearly a generation ago, as tourists were arriving in numbers on a grey, rainy day.

The Tiananmen Massacre is a taboo subject in China and the country’s state-controlled media was silent on the sensitive anniversary taking place just 66 days ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

China’s communist party has never offered a full account of the crackdown on the night of June 3-4, when troops and tanks gunned down students and other protestors who had been demonstrating peacefully in the central square for weeks.

The government branded the pro-democracy protests a counter-revolutionary rebellion and hunted down ringleaders and jailed hundreds of suspects.

This week New York-based Human Rights Watch urged China to release dozens of people who it said were believed to be still held in prison on charges related to the 1989 protests.

“The Chinese government should honour its commitment to improve human rights before the 2008 Beijing Olympics by releasing the estimated 130 Tiananmen prisoners improperly arrested or tried,” the rights group said in a statement.

China is using the Olympics as its “coming out party,” the statement said, and Tiananmen Square is being used as a venue for official events such as the start of the marathon road races.

The square was used in March to launch the Beijing Olympic torch relay in a lavish event attended by President Hu Jintao.

“Beijing’s use of Tiananmen Square as a macabre prop for China’s Olympic coming-out-party’ adds insult to injury,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

“The Chinese government should show the global Olympic audience it’s serious about human rights by releasing the Tiananmen detainees.”

In the lead-up to the August 8-24 Olympics, China has stepped up security around the square where plain-clothes police and video cameras closely monitor visitors.

Police have been authorised to make random searches of visitors to the square to reduce security threats ahead of the Games, state press reported recently.

    – Rescuers saved and evacuated 724,794 people to safe places, including 6,541 survivors buried under the rubble, as of Tuesday midnight.

    – Hospitals took in a total of 85,722 injured people, 55,514 of whom recovered and left as of Wednesday noon.

    – Domestic and foreign donations had reached 34.79 billion yuan (5.04 billion U.S. dollars), up 2.07 billion yuan overnight. And 9.78 billion yuan had been forwarded to the earthquake-affected areas.

    – A total of 601,900 tents, one of the most urgently needed relief supplies, had been delivered to quake regions.

    – A total of 3,866,100 quilts and 8,757,300 garments had been sent to these regions.

    – The government has allocated 19.56 billion yuan (2.83 billion U.S. dollars) as of 2 p.m. Wednesday for quake relief efforts. The fund included 15.39 billion yuan from the central budget and 4.17 billion yuan from local budgets.

    – Between Tuesday noon and Wednesday noon, five aftershocks measuring above 4 on the Richter scale had been monitored in Sichuan.

    – International medical teams from Russia, Japan, Italy and Germany have treated 2,410 patients in quake areas since May 20.