The Establishment of the Provisional Students' Federation of
Capital Universities and Colleges
23nd Apr, 1989 (Sun)
"Building Democracy"
Student pro-democracy activism continued to gain momentum in the following week. As new posters urging students to expand their pro-democracy activities blanketed campus walls and began spilling out onto neighbourhood walls and telelphone poles, student activists focused on founding a united organisation. What had been spontaneous outburst of sorrow and frustration were rapidly metamorphosing into organised movement for political reform.
On April 23rd, the "Provisional Students' Federation of Capital Universities and Colleges " was established, to counter the government sanctioned National Student Federation. It united over twenty Beijing institution, and its first leaders were Zhou Yongjun from University of Politics and Law, and Wuer Kaixi, from Beijing Normal University. Students began fundraising on the streets to raise money for an independent paper.
The Science and Technology Daily ran an entire page of news and photos about the student sit-ins at Tiananmen, going so far as to describe the movement as one for "freedom and democracy." The issue almost did not make the newsstands; authorities permitted it to appear only after a number of key editors and reporters threatened to resign. The Science and Technology Daily coverage was a milestone: since 1949, no major paper had dared to print an article so clearly against the interests of the Central Committee.
(After the June suppression, the paper's top editors were purged and replaced.)
Exhibition Pack on the Tiananmen Massacre 
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Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China