Did the Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown happen in 1989?

Yes, the Tiananmen Square protests and the subsequent military crackdown occurred in 1989.

Large-scale student-led pro-democracy demonstrations began in Beijing in April 1989 (following the death of reformist leader Hu Yaobang) and centered on Tiananmen Square. They grew to involve hundreds of thousands of people calling for political reform, anti-corruption measures, and greater freedoms. On the night of June 3–4, 1989, the Chinese government declared martial law and sent in the People’s Liberation Army to clear the square and surrounding areas, resulting in a violent crackdown with significant casualties (estimates of deaths vary widely, from hundreds to thousands, as the Chinese government has never released an official toll and heavily censors discussion of the event).

This is one of the most extensively documented events of the late 20th century, covered by contemporaneous reporting from Western and other international journalists present in Beijing, declassified documents, eyewitness accounts, photographs, video footage, and historical analyses by scholars. The Chinese Communist Party refers to it as the “June Fourth Incident” and maintains tight controls on information about it inside China.