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For the past 25 years Liane Lee has taken sleeping pills on the eve of the Tiananmen Square massacre commemorations.

As an eyewitness and survivor, she has spoken for a quarter of a century, recalling the same gruesome memories, the same chilling details.

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“I always think maybe this time it will be easier,” Lee said Tuesday.

But still she can’t sleep.

Lee was 26 on June 3, 1989, a Hong Kong student on her second trip to the six weeks of protests, when the Chinese government began to crack down. Hard. On June 4, the tanks came, and the next day, Lee left the square.

“It’s harder because the wound is deeper with the denials, the lies and the propaganda orchestrated by the Chinese government,” she said during a panel discussion at the University of Ottawa with fellow survivor Chen Yuguo.

At times during the powerful speech, her voice shook. Her memories were like snapshots of fleeting moments and faces — “noble faces,” she said — of victims whose names she never learned.