Absolutely nothing happened June 1989

Are people in China or on Chinese social media allowed to talk about it today?

Being able to talk about the genocide of the Palestinian people doesn't seem to change anything. Turns out freedom of speech is happily granted when your speech is powerless.
- You asked why people care about it so much, and I’m pretty confident the reason is because we’re allowed to talk about it here. If we don’t, someone will forget about it. Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
  Furthermore, what we’re remembering is a moment when people who were trying to make their voices heard were silenced. By making our voices heard and remembering that they lost their lives in the name of their voices is in itself an act of remembrance that honors their memories.
  Lastly, for the low hanging fruit, asking why people are “laser-focused” on an event from a long time ago is a stupid fucking question when today there are nazis and fascists on the fucking ballot. That’s why we remember the past.
  And yes, to your point, those do who know history are doomed to watch others repeat it but remembering it is nonetheless valuable, and honoring people who died for something noble is also valuable.
  
  You speak of nobility and remembering the past but I've only seen this used as a cheap way to score political points on lemmy.world (and upvotes) for what that matters.
  Someone casually browsing who doesn't know the event would only glean that the CCP is bad, but they would have no idea what the students were even protesting about. So much for remembering the past.
  As for nazis on the ballot, we have two presidential candidates and both fully support israel's campaign of genocide and lebensraum.
  
  Well you didn’t ask why the OP was laser focused on this event, you asked why “people” are and I gave my best guess as to why it keeps coming up. It also could be that people just like to do things they’re told not to do
  
  Yeah, that's fair.
- No speech is powerless. That's exactly why the CCP supresses it.
  
  That just proves my point. If bringing it up didn't matter then the CCP wouldn't bother surpressing it.

Are you for real? Should we forget the people that are silenced in this world?

No, just wondering why the obsession with this one event. This particular event gets brought up more on lemmy.world than perhaps any other historical event. I would ask the same if people kept bringing up the great molasses flood and cracking the same old "slow as molasses" joke.
- Because it's a world famous event that is virtually unknown in the host country. There are usually examples for each country.
  The US doesn't know anything about the war crimes exposed by wikileaks.
  Russia knows almost nothing true about the Ukrainian war.
  The UK has superembargos (usually about celebs and royalty) which is only reported on abroad.
  Thailand doesn't gossip about its royalty.
  Etc.
  
  Every single person in China knows about this event. And the average Chinese person's understanding is closer to reality about it than that of the average Westerner. Sure Chinese people's understanding of it is overly sympathetic to the government, and they scrub internet posts about the event, but Americans have a completely cartoonish propaganda view. Listen to the reporters who were there, not random redditors with a hate boner.
  
  Sure they scrub any mention of it, it's totally fine
  
  Every single person in China knows about this event
  How does everyone in china know all about it if the CCCP scrub internet posts about the event?
  https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2024/06/what-is-the-tiananmen-crackdown/
  In the 35 years since the crackdown, all discussion of the incident has been heavily censored in China, as authorities have effectively attempted to erase it from history. Public commemoration or mere mention, online or off, of the Tiananmen crackdown is banned.
  Regularly since 1989, activists in mainland China have been detained and charged with “subversion” or “picking quarrels” if they commemorate those who were killed, call for the release of prisoners or criticize government actions during the Tiananmen crackdown.
  The government has never accepted responsibility for the human rights violations during and after the military crackdown or held any perpetrator accountable. With each year that passes, justice becomes ever more elusive.
  
  Amnesty is probably a capitalist lib propaganda group or something to them.
- good news! YOU have the power to post about other tragedies.

Because there is a real effort by a government to prevent people millions of people from remembering.

I don't know anyone who is laser focused. But anyway, do you think important historical events exist? If so, what are your top ten of the last half century?

The idea of Tiananmen Square being one of the top ten most important historical events in that time period is wild to me. Just in terms of death toll, the highest estimate mentioned on Wikipedia of 10,000 comes from a US ambassador citing an anonymous "friend," and is many times higher than any other estimate - a more realistic generous estimate is closer to 1,000 (the official number is 300). Let's compare that to the lowest estimates from the list of genocides page:
Gaza: 38,000 (ongoing)
Darfur: 98,000 (2005)
Congo (Effacer le tableau): 60,000 (2003)
Congo (Massacre of Hutis): 200,000 (1997)
Rwanda: 491,000 (1994)
Bosnia: 31,000 (1995)
Somalia (Isaaq): 50,000 (1989)
Iraq (Kurds): 50,000 (1989)
Cambodia: 1,386,000 (1979)
Indonesia (East Timor): 85,000 (1999)
Uganda: 100,000 (1978)
The same year that Tiananmen Square happened, two separate genocides were ongoing that, even by the most ridiculously generous comparisons possible, each killed at least 5 times as many people. Searching "Isaaq" on either .world or .ml gives exactly one hit which is a comment listing off a bunch of genocides, like I'm doing now. Entire cities were leveled and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee the country, but nobody ever talks about it (myself included, until today).
In addition to that list, if we're talking about events in general, then we should also look at the list of interstate wars (again, lowest estimates):
Persian Gulf War: 29,000 (1991)
War in Abkhazia: 25,000 (1993)
First Congo War: 235,000 (1997)
Kosovo War: 16,000 (1999)
Eritrian-Ethopian War: 53,000 (2000)
Second Chechen War: 20,000 (2000)
There's ongoing conflicts in Myanmar, in North Africa, in Mexico, and in Sudan, and more, each of which has left more dead than Tiananmen this year and the year's not even over yet.
So it doesn't seem especially significant in terms of raw numbers, but you could argue that it's more significant because of the effect it had on Chinese politics, as the controversy led to the resignation of the head of state, Deng Xiaoping. Except that I never ever see anything like that discussed. Either way, it didn't change the broad direction of the reforms.
I could give my own reasons as to why it's given such a high position of importance, but I'm genuinely curious to hear your own explanation of why Tiananmen would warrant a spot on a top ten list of important events, compared to any of the other events I've listed.
I don’t know anyone who is laser focused.
Really? You haven't seen the many posts on this one event on lemmy.world? Hell, this is the shitpost community, not even a political one.

Because Lemmy is considered and made by communists.

Communists, tankies who will always rush in to defend the CCP and suppress the atrocities committed by the CCP, without fail. It's both hilarious and madening.

Basically what shitposting is all about.