He also made no mention of an intensifying human rights crackdown in China – described by some as the most severe in decades – that has seen more than 200 lawyers and activists disappeared, detained or interrogated since July.
This past summer alone, at least 323 Chinese lawyers and rights defenders working for human rights, religious freedom, environmental protection, labor rights, etc., were disappeared, detained, tortured or harassed.
Crofton Black is an Investigator on the Secret Prisons team at Reprieve, gathering information to support those who have been "disappeared" and detained without trial.
"It shows that even if you disappear and detain people, you cannot subjugate the spirit of the Tibetan people," he said.
To prevent any commemoration of the anniversary, the government has, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an activist group, "detained, disappeared or summoned" dozens of lawyers, activists, artists, and journalists.
Xu Zerong, the first Hong Kong resident to be detained, disappeared on a trip to neighboring Guangdong Province last August, five months before the English publication of the book.
Two weeks ago, the government's human rights commission acknowledged for the first time that 275 people -- some of them former students from the Tlatelolco rally -- disappeared after being detained by security forces in the "dirty war" of the 1970's.
Other defenders told me stories of colleagues arbitrarily detained, disappeared and murdered.
Dozens of executives and government officials have already disappeared or been detained in the crackdown, including several billionaires - Zhou Chengjian and Guo Guangchang to name a few.
Up to 2,000 males in Yemen, including children, were detained, disappeared, or tortured in secret prisons run by the United Arab Emirates as part of its widespread hunt for al-Qaida and ISIS militants.
A sign at the Patio 29 memorial describes the site as "an emblematic place of the human rights violations that took place between 1973 and 1990 as it was used to cover up the bodies and identities of the detained disappeared and politically executed during the military regime".
