Observations on Tiananmen
The Tiananmen Square killings of 3-4 June 1989 remain the most sensitive political issue in China and the Chinese government never lets the population forget it. According to Amnesty International, at least 200 Tiananmen demonstrators detained in June 1989 remain behind bars, and even to mention the name "Tiananmen" on China's tightly censored internet can bring a knock on the door from the police.
The Tiananmen Mothers are, therefore, among the bravest and most tenacious women in China. Formed immediately after the 1989 killings and the uprisings in 400 other Chinese cities, the 126 surviving members of this campaigning group are regularly detained and threatened, and are removed from Beijing whenever foreign statesmen concerned with human rights are visiting.
The Mothers' founder is Ding Zilin, a former professor in Beijing now in her seventies, whose 17-year-old son, Jiang Jielian, was shot dead at Tiananmen. She immediately demanded that the circumstances of his death be investigated, and before long had been joined by almost 130 other parents and relatives of those killed. For 18 years Mrs Ding has fought to keep the memory of Tiananmen alive.
"A person can make many different choices," she says. "I made the choice of documenting death. I have scaled a mountain of corpses and I have floated in the tears of the victims' families."
Several times nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the Tiananmen Mothers issue demands on a regular basis. They recently sent their most powerful statement yet to the New York-based NGO Human Rights in China. They are asking that what the Chinese government continues to dismiss as the "incident", or condemn as the "counter-revolutionary uprising", no longer be confined to silent anger and despair.
The Mothers call for a review of the pain and suffering that survivors and family members have felt over the past 18 years, and for the incident to be re-evaluated through some kind of judicial process. Their letter states that the official term "riot" is an inadequate attempt to dismiss this "wound of history".
They also call for the lifting of bans on certain books. One of them contains the words of Zhao Ziyang, Communist Party general secretary until mid-May 1989, when he was deposed and confined to house arrest until his death in 2005.
Zhao was opposed to military action. This became apparent when he suddenly appeared in the midst of the demonstrators, murmuring: "I have come too late, too late." Those watching noticed the icy look on the face of the already hated premier Li Peng, standing silently behind Zhao and soon to be reviled as "the butcher of Tiananmen". But Li Peng's own account of the "incident" was also banned, and Ding Zilin's group wants it released for publication. Eager to shift ultimate blame for the killings away from himself, Li Peng assigned it, properly, to venerable party veterans far more senior than he.
"In the spring and summer of 1989, a serious political disturbance took place in China," Li wrote in the monthly magazine Seeking Truth. "With the boldness of vision of a great revolutionary and politician, Comrade Deng Xiaoping - along with other party elders - gave the leadership their firm and full support to put down the political disturbance using forceful measures."
Reading such accounts of the events, the Mothers' statement suggests, will test whether "the era-defining wrongs of 4 June can ever be justly resolved".
For years the Mothers have issued the same three demands: a fresh investigation into Tiananmen; public accounting and appropriate restitution; and prosecution of those responsible.
Deng Xiaoping is dead. So is Yang Shangkun, the president and army chief whose voice echoed around the square from loudspeakers on the night of 20 May, when martial law was declared, warning the hundreds of thousands in the square that the authorities were preparing to act mercilessly against those who declined to leave. Li Peng is still alive, but Tiananmen remains unmentioned in his newly published memoir.
China's current president, Hu Jintao, is not the man to make even modest changes to the government handling of Tiananmen. I met him in 1989 in Lhasa, where he was party secretary for Tibet. Hu Jintao spoke of his dislike of the place, its lack of culture and its dangerous people. He admitted that, if there were an uprising, no Tibetan would protect him.
Immediately after Tiananmen, he sent a telegram of congratulations to Deng Xiaoping. His ruthlessness "helicoptered" him, as the Chinese put it, to the heights of political power. By 2003 Hu was president. But even the former Gauleiter of Tibet may prove no match for the powerful Tiananmen Mothers.
Jonathan Mirsky was named international reporter of the year for his reports from Tiananmen Square in 1989
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