Kuang Min, male, born on November 3, 1962, killed at age 27; he was a full-time technician of the production technology department of the Beijing Fork Lift Main Factory; on the night of June 3, 1989, he was killed in Muxudi, Beijing; the bullet entered from the back, piercing the liver; his family still keeps his ashes at home.

Testimony of Kuang Diqing, father of Kuang Min:

My son Kuang Min was shot and killed by the martial law troops of the People's Liberation Army on the night of June 3, 1989, in Muxudi, Beijing. He was only 27 years old. In 1980 he enrolled in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Beijing Polytechnic University. After he graduated in 1984, he was assigned to work at the Beijing Fork Lift Main Factory. At the time of his death, he was a full-time technician in the production technology department at the plant. Since the Fork Lift Main Factory is located at the Lotus Pond, south of the Military Museum, and I live on Yuetan South Road, he had to travel through Muxudi and cross Chang'an Boulevard every day going to and from work.

I had just been sent to Jinghai County on the outskirts of Tianjin for my work. After I received a phone call from my unit on June 5 about the death of my son, I hurried back to Beijing on June 6. My daughter-in-law told me that during the last ten days of May 1989, tens of thousands of people would go out on the streets every day to support the student movement, and after work my son and his wife would hang out in Muxudi with the local residents, on some days only briefly, on other days for a longer time. On the night of June 3, the people were dispersed, pursued and killed by the PLA martial law troops that had entered the city. My son died in the nearby Water Conservancy Hospital. His body was then transferred on June 4 to Fengtai Hospital, in an ambulance from Electricity Hospital. On June 8, I saw my son in the mortuary of Fengtai Hospital. Just one glimpse of his face made me cry so hard that I almost lost my senses.

After those who had come with me had pulled me away, the cadre of the fork lift factory trade union and some of my son's fellow students changed my son's clothes. While they did that, they took pictures of his body, both from the front and from the back. They told me afterwards that he was struck by a bullet in the back which pierced his liver and belly. The entry wound was small, but the exit wound was very large, which indicates that he was hit by an exploding bullet. When I went to the cremation area at Babaoshan Cemetery on June 9 to get information, I saw soldiers standing on guard. They told me that I had to follow a certain procedure, that I had to write an explanation of the circumstances of my son's death. If I wrote down that he had been shot, they could not complete the cremation procedure. There was also someone who said that the bodies of some of those who had been killed had been wrapped and passed off as victims of a car accident before they could be cremated. I refused to do it that way. Heaven knows, these butchers killed my son, and they expect me to cover their tracks? If they didn't want to cremate him, I was prepared to leave his body in the mortuary forever!

On the afternoon of June 12 I received notification from Electricity Hospital that the public security office had demanded that my son's cremation take place within two days. Only then did I write a simple explanation of the circumstances of his death, stating the actual facts, and on June 13 I completed the procedure for cremation. I still keep my son's ashes in my home. The Fork Lift Main Factory later gave me 1,000 yuan as support. I hadn't asked for it.

My divorce at age 32 left me with my son as my only child, and I depended on him for my life. He married in 1987 and he did not yet have children. In an instant, a family of three fell apart: my son died and my daughter-in-law left. On whom can I depend in the future? A lonely 70-year-old man like me, old and poor, suffering from a lung condition, my life hanging on a thread-I am at a complete loss: who will support me in the future? For those despotic dictators nothing is sacred!

Kuang Diqing