Tiananmen Mothers urge China to bear responsibility for 'crimes'

A man wears a T-shirt, supporting the mothers of those who died during the 1989 military crackdown of pro-democracy protesters near Beijing's Tiananmen Square, at Hong Kong's Victoria Park in this file June 4, 2009 photo. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

BEIJING (Reuters) - A group of families demanding justice for victims of China's 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown declared that the government must bear responsibility for "historical crimes" in the same way it has called on Japan to do so for its wartime past.

The Tiananmen Mothers activist group has long urged the leadership to open a dialogue and reassess the 1989 pro-democracy movement, violently suppressed on June 4 that year by the government which labelled it "counter-revolutionary".