Scores of policemen kept a close watch on crowds in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Wednesday, the anniversary of the bloody military crackdown on 1989 pro-democracy protests centred on the vast plaza.

No public commemorations were known to be held and there were few reminders of the events of 19 years ago. Instead, the square, like the rest of the Chinese capital, was adorned with symbols of the upcoming Beijing Olympics, in which it will be prominently featured.

Exiled dissidents and human rights groups have sought to link the two events, saying releasing political prisoners and allowing exiled student leaders to return would burnish the Communist government’s image before the Olympic spotlight turns on Beijing.

“Then the Chinese people can work together to build a new China out of the ruins of national tragedy and to engage the world as a rights-respecting nation at home and abroad,” Wang Dan, one of the 1989 movement’s leading voices, wrote in an article in Wednesday’s International Herald Tribune.

Discussion of the student movement and the June 3-4 military assault on the protesters in which hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed remains taboo within China. The Communist leadership labeled the protest an anti-government riot and has never offered a full accounting of the crackdown.

Security was tight Wednesday and crowds of visitors moved calmly around the square, one of Beijing’s main tourist attractions. Police and other security officers searched bags for banners or leaflets containing dissident messages.

A security cordon around the hulking Monument to the People’s Heroes was the only visual reminder of the protests. The obelisk and its surrounding terraces have been closed to the public ever since student leaders used it as their command center on the square in 1989.

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