WASHINGTON – Twenty-five years ago tonight, student leader Yan Xiong watched in horror as the Chinese Army killed hundreds if not thousands of his fellow pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Today, he’s a U.S. Army chaplain whose 20 years of service has included ministry to American troops in Iraq.
Commemorations of the 1989 massacre are strictly forbidden in China, but Major Xiong and other survivors recalled the crackdown and their crushed hopes for freedom at a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington.
Xiong says he spent almost two years in prison after Tiananmen. After his release, he met a member of an underground church who led him to faith in Jesus Christ.
In 1992, Xiong emigrated to the U.S. as a political refugee. He told members of Congress at Friday’s hearing, “Since the time of my baptism as a Christian, I also find the freedom that knowing God provides.”
Major Xiong said his prayer is that “the lives taken at Tiananmen Square will continue to live on in our memory.”
