"Back then, they feared the students, and deployed tanks and guns against these students," he said. "Today, they don't dare to tell this to the public. They don't dare to tell the truth to the Chinese people, tell the whole world what really happened."
Bao says at least 99 percent of the responsibility for deploying the army in 1989 lies with China's then-leader Deng Xiaoping, who died in 1997.
"I think Deng took this decision because he wanted to safeguard one-party rule, and its governing of China," said Bao. "He feared the people would become the masters of this country, and would leave the party out, and then the party would not be able to continue being the master of China.
"He has already passed away, and his successors, his heirs in the party still do not dare to point out and say: `Deng Xiaoping made a mistake,'" he said.
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Wang Nan, 19, was about to finish high school. Out of curiosity, he took his camera and joined groups of people who had occupied the square in the heart of Beijing.
His mother, Zhang Xianling, spent days looking for him, only to be told through unofficial channels that Wang had been shot in the forehead by troops enforcing martial law. Medical students had tried to help him but couldn't get him to a hospital because the area was sealed off. Zhang was told her son died at 3:30 a.m. on June 4 near the Great Hall of the People, the seat of China's ceremonial legislature.
She keeps his letters, photos, student card and library card in a box in her living room, along with his death certificate and a photo, taken by one of the medical students, of his half-buried, plastic-wrapped body. She has never looked at the photo.
Now she is a member of the Tiananmen Mothers, a group that campaigns for the truth about the event to be revealed and for criminal and historical accountability, and acts as a support network when a member falls ill.
Every year, Zhang's freedom is restricted from the first weekend in April to the end of the June 4 anniversary to stop her from speaking out about the event. Sometimes, police drive her to the cemetery to visit her son's grave to make sure no journalists or sympathizers accompany her.
"The scars will be in my heart forever," said Zhang at her Beijing home.
"Perhaps the way we commemorate this tragedy has changed. Before, I used to cry and cry. Now I have no more tears. I have become stronger, but my determination has not faded, and I will continue with my peaceful and rational quest to condemn the brutality of using violence to suppress the people. We Chinese people have suffered too much already."
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A teenage soldier in the People's Liberation Army, Chen Guang was assigned to clean up the protest site the morning after. He later left the army to become an artist, but his memories of ashes, hair and burning have influenced his oil paintings, some of which are as realistic as photographs.
He depicts items that he saw there - bikes, books, an athletic shoe - or recreates scenes from photographs contained within two rolls of film that he took and kept, including one of soldiers from his unit posing in front of Tiananmen Square. He collects hair and ashes, and uses cut locks to create paintings, such as one of a shaven-headed man with his bare back draped with pieces of hair.
Chen has urged unfettered discussion of the crackdown, and was detained in early May ahead of the anniversary. Witnesses saw police carry away some of his paintings. A few days earlier, he had commemorated the 25th anniversary with an art performance in a borrowed studio with a dozen friends.
In the dark, they watched as a girl walked slowly around the studio, shining a torch on the walls and the painted numerals of years from 1989 onwards. The light was suddenly switched on and Chen started slapping white paint over them, including a prominent "1989."
"The history is like a blank," he says. "It has been wiped out."
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AP writer Jack Chang and video journalist Helene Franchineau contributed.
