On Oct. 1, the People’s Republic of China celebrated its 60th birthday in a massive, colorful parade in Beijing that featured a grand show of military strength, well-drilled singers and dancers reminiscent of the 2008 Summer Olympics and giant portraits of Communist leaders riding on floats. To coincide with China’s National Day, the China Awareness Organization (CAO) staged a large exhibit in Keefe Campus Center and Robert Frost Library this past week to educate the College campus about China and its recent past. The displays featured interesting information on China’s history, from the Cultural Revolution to President Nixon’s visit, but one display was unacceptable: “Tiananmen Square: Massacre?”

Given that there are numerous eyewitness accounts and even footage of the incident, which occurred in June 1989 and killed, by conservative estimates, a few hundred, the CAO’s blatant questioning of the massacre rings as disrespect to human rights and the lives of the nearly one thousand Chinese civilians who perished in a protest for increased democracy. The display then takes the official Chinese government line that there were no deaths within the square itself — a questionable assertion in itself. The CAO should not reduce a serious human rights violation and a watershed moment in Chinese history to a debate over semantics. Whether or not people were killed within the square proper is a trivial and disrespectful issue when compared to the magnitude and ramifications of the slaughter.

The Chinese government admits that 241 people died and 7,000 were wounded, already a horrific figure, and Amnesty International estimates that nearly 1,000 people were killed. There is footage in which gunshots can clearly be heard and frantic students can be seen carrying their bleeding friends and compatriots to what they hoped would be safety and help. BBC Reporter Kate Adie, covering the massacre at the time, noted “indiscriminate fire” within the square, contradicting the Chinese government’s claim, and journalists reported that student protesters who sought refuge in buses were pulled out and beaten. Millions of people have seen the now-iconic photo of a man standing defiantly in front of a tank rolling down Tiananmen Square, a man who many suspect was later executed by the Chinese government for his bravery, as the government could never present him again to silence the subsequent outcry.

With China’s human rights abuses still prevalent and documented, from controlling and censuring the Internet to the utter lack of due process of law, the CAO’s dismissal of the Tiananmen Square Massacre marks an alarming disregard for very important issues that they as an organization should be helping to resolve. Though they have every right to be proud of China and its unbelievable progress over the past decade and should be commended for their educational work on campus, they should try to help China improve further by allowing freedom for its people and reducing its human rights abuses instead of trying to paint the nation in rose-tinted colors to the College campus.