Pictures/text: Jan van der Made

In 2019 it is thirty years ago that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) ended weeks of peaceful demonstrations in Beijing. On the night of 3 and 4 June 1989, PLA tanks and armored personnel carriers entered the Chinese capital from four sides, forcing away makeshift barricades, crushing buses while soldiers used live ammunition on demonstrators and bystanders.

This foto report paints the atmosphere on and around Tiananmen Square in the days leading up to the massacre.

15 april: the death of Hu Yaobang

Former Communist Party Secretary General Hu Yaobang dies of a heart attack age 73. Hu was one of the more liberal leaders, but he was replaced by Zhao Ziyang after criticism on his face pace of reform. People start to gather on Tiananmen Square to express their sorrow, but quickly mourning turns into expressions of discontent with the government.

Going through the streets today, one sees desolate rows of two and three-storey houses with gardens - some well-kept but many neglected. There is a local hospital but it is closed. Two large office buildings have some of their windows broken and don’t seem to be used. From the inside, the barking of stray dogs is deafening. “In the beginning there was just barren land,” says Alexander, a local driver.

"Then suddenly everybody wanted to get involved.”

Project developers, suppliers and workers streamed to the venue to take a share in the development flurry. It took two years to finish the project that included all the advantages of a modern village, such as roads, sewage, water supply, electricity and public transport.

When the athletes left, the OEK stepped in and through a lottery system, eligible people who had social or physical problems, were supplied with free or heavily subsidised housing.

According to the British Housing association East Thames Group, that has researched what happened to Olympic athletes’ villages when they were vacated after the Barcelona and Athens Games, the venue was mired in controversy from the outset. “Chosen was an area of degraded, polluted, minimally inhabited wasteland on the city’s far northern outskirts,” says the report.

“New legislation permitted rapid compulsory purchase of the land but the village was built using old, environmentally unfriendly technology.” The report cites misuse of funds and slow decision-making, but by 2006 some 90 per cent of the houses were allotted to people with extreme economic or physical problems. Christos Drosos, Andreas Dimou and Birkos Dimitris are three elderly inhabitants who enjoy a glass at the only bar in the Olympic Village.

They were among the lucky people who won the lottery for a better life. “I did not choose to come here,” says Drosos. “I applied for social housing and this is what I got.” Drosos likes living in the Olympic village but the crisis makes it almost impossible to go on. There were 32 shops here. Now there are only four.” Taxes of up to 12,000 euros per month for medium-sized shops forced shop owners to raise prices.

The customers couldn’t pay for the products any more and many shops were forced to close down. Shopkeepers in the Olympic Village are feeling the effects of the economic crisis. “There’s no money in the banks, so the people are very afraid,” says George, who works in one of the remaining four shops. On the referendum, he is sceptical: “Whatever the outcome, we can not just start over from Monday,” he says.