Ya Weilin, 73, hanged himself in a parking lot in Beijing on May 25. He was marking, as he had in one way or another for 23 years, the death of his son at the hands of the Chinese government and the People's Liberation Army on the night of June 3, 1989. After 23 years of waiting, 23 years of petitioning and questioning, 23 years of searching for justice, Old Ya made his last dramatic statement without ever seeing justice done for the Tiananmen killings.
In video testimony Ya and his wife gave in 2004, he looked sad but determined. They had asked the Chinese government for answers to the questions any parent would want to know: "Why did you use real guns and bullets on your people? ... Such a big China, such a big Chinese Communist Party, you killed my son, but you didn't even say sorry."
Since the Tiananmen killings, none of the questions raised by the heartbroken parents have been answered; nobody has been held accountable. On the contrary, immediately after the military crackdown, after the mass arrests and purges, the government launched an elaborate campaign to re-establish its legitimacy. An official version of the events was constructed and a massive effort undertaken to ensure this fiction would become the national memory.