China’s authoritarian regime has long lied to its entire population about what happened in the early morning of June 4, 1989. Those who know it’s a lie don’t dare speak out. And those who don’t know, especially the young, are limited in their access to the truth.

Beginning in late April 1989, peaceful student demonstrators filled Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square. They demanded democracy, freedom of speech and of the press, and an end to government corruption. Their gathering, which predated the fall of the Berlin Wall by more than two years, drew more than a million people together of all ages and from all professional backgrounds. Their gathering inspired hundreds of smaller demonstrations throughout China.