Cash without accounting?

Families of victims of the Chinese government’s brutal crackdown on protesters in 1989 say security officials have discussed giving financial compensation to family members, with no formal apology for the incident.

The Tiananmen Mothers, a loose-knit group of victims’ families that documents those killed and injured in the 1989 crackdown, said in an essay circulated Tuesday that China’s public security apparatus first raised the idea to one family February. (The essay is the mothers’ annual communication, typically released a few days before the anniversary of the June 4 crackdown).

“The visitors did not speak of making the truth public, carrying out judicial investigations, or providing an explanation for the case of each victim,” the group wrote of a family visited by police. “Instead, they only raised the question of how much to pay, emphasizing that this was meant for that individual case and not for the families in the group as a whole.”

China has never published an investigation of the matter and still considers it a highly sensitive topic. Rights groups estimate anywhere between several hundred and several thousand people were killed in the crackdown. The Tiananmen Mothers have confirmed 203 names.

“If the authorities merely want to settle the June Fourth matter with money and to do it under the table, then what kind of results will this produce?,” the group wrote.