Happy Tiananmen Square Massacre Day: everybody remembers except the Chinese

[CountDeMoney]

Excellent "Then" and "Now" photos:
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/then-and-now-tiananmen-square-protests-iconic-scenes/1078/?hpid=z1

In Tiananmen Square, no trace of remembrance on 25th anniversary of protests

BEIJING — It was a quiet day in Tiananmen Square. Even as tens of thousands gathered in Hong Kong and global headlines marked the 25th anniversary of China's brutal crackdown on student protesters, there was no trace of remembrance at the site where many of them were killed.

Tourists posed for pictures below the iconic portrait of Mao Zedong. Children ran laughing through the square.

The only sign of that day's lingering effects: swarms of police officers patrolling the square and stationed every few hundred feet on the roads leading to it.

For weeks, as the anniversary approached, security in Beijing grew tighter. Foreign journalists were called in and warned. Officials mobilized tens of thousands of informants to look for suspicious activity, according to state media. Authorities jailed or forced out of the city dissidents most likely to criticize the government. By Wednesday, the heart of the capital was in lockdown.

This year, the repressive tactics ahead of the Tiananmen anniversary began earlier and were more extensive, a sign that the Communist Party views the historical event as an enduring threat.

The hushed interviews at the square Wednesday revealed just how effectively the party has quashed public memory of a crackdown that killed hundreds, if not thousands. Many claimed to have no remembrance of the massacre or appeared too afraid to respond.

"Today? What is special about today?" a tourist, 41, from Hunan province said in response to a query. When pressed whether he had not heard about an incident in 1989, he said nervously, "Oh, you mean the student protest back then? That was today? I had forgotten all about it."

He then quickly walked away.

Three local college students — among the few who acknowledged the massacre and talked openly about it — said they had come to the square out of curiosity. Several police officers hovered nearby.

"Of course we know about June 4th. It's an open secret in China," said one of the students, standing in the spot that 25 years earlier had been packed by a sea of protesters his age demanding political change.

But just because they knew about the massacre didn't necessarily mean they agreed with the protesters.

"It was an irrational decision. Was it worth it to bleed and be killed for such a cause?" the student said.

Many former protesters , who witnessed those deaths, blame such reactions on the government's propaganda, with classes and textbooks casting the 1989 protests as counterrevolutionary riots that threatened the country.

"This is why we, the survivors, must try our best to tell the next generation about our experience and help them achieve progress without sacrificing as much as we did," said Xiang Xiaoji, 57, a former protester who now lives in New York.

In stark contrast to the silence in Beijing, tens of thousands in Hong Kong converged Wednesday night on Victoria Park for a candlelight vigil. Organizers said more than 180,000 people participated. The territory, a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997 but has a separate political system and greater liberties, has been a focal point of Tiananmen commemorations.

Under Hong Kong's looming skyscrapers, rally organizers read out the names of those who died in the protests 25 years ago, including a 9-year-old girl. A wreath was laid beside replicas of the Monument to the People's Heroes at Tiananmen Square and the Goddess of Democracy statue erected by protesters in 1989.

Speaking to the crowd, Teng Biao, a prominent human rights lawyer from the mainland, said that despite the many killed in Tiananmen, more have stood up for their rights in China. "You can't kill us all," he said.

Holding up candles, the crowd at one point repeated two chants: "Pass on this spirit from generation to generation" and "Fight to the end."

One speaker, Lee Cheuk Yan, linked Tiananmen to Hong Kong's struggles for democracy under Beijing rule. "The evil claw of Communist dictatorship is digging its way into our city, suppressing freedom, stepping up interference, manipulating the promised democratic elections," he said.

In a statement, the White House said: "Twenty-five years later, the United States continues to honor the memories of those who gave their lives in and around Tiananmen Square . . . and we call on Chinese authorities to account for those killed, detained, or missing."

Hong Lei, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, demanded that the United States "stop making irresponsible remarks related to issues of China's internal affairs." Hong said China had given its people great economic growth in the past 25 years.

Meanwhile, China's repression of Tiananmen talk was also heavy online. Google's search engine and applications were largely inaccessible this week, apparently the handiwork of authorities. The Chinese- and English-language Web sites of the Wall Street Journal also were blocked in recent days. Users of the professional networking site LinkedIn complained that it was censoring Tiananmen-related posts.

Human rights activist Hu Jia, 40, who participated in the 1989 protest, said by phone that he had been placed under arrest the past three months. "The dark side of society we are seeing today is the same that was shown 25 years ago," he said. "The government believed they could monopolize power by taking all those lives before. Now, they control the power by arresting people, killing the freedom of dissidents. Nothing has changed."

Among dozens of activists detained by authorities ahead of the anniversary was Yan Zhengxue, a painter featured in a Washington Post report Sunday about artists trying to keep alive the public memory of Tiananmen.

Before he was spirited away by authorities, he recounted being repeatedly forced by state security to leave Beijing on "vacations" ahead of sensitive dates such as Tiananmen anniversaries.

He described the awkward trips with his wife to rural areas accompanied by police, who he said were perpetually at the couple's side to prevent them from talking to others or participating in events.

Reached by cellphone Wednesday, Yan confirmed in a brief conversation that authorities had again taken him out of Beijing.

"It's not so convenient to talk now. There are people sitting with me," he said.

Before hanging up, however, the 70-year-old quickly added, "They are so afraid at the moment. Even now, with someone like me, they remain afraid."

[Razgovory]

Thank you Seedy.  I was wondering if you were going to post something about this.

[Jacob]

The Chinese remember. They just aren't foolish enough to make a public demonstration of that remembrance on Tiananmen Square, especially on the day.

The massacre is an elephant in the room of Chinese politics, and a huge one to boot. It is constantly alluded to, and even when it is not the way the subject is avoided shapes the discourse. The Chinese remember.

[Sheilbh]

Hong Kong remembers (Mono excepted ):

[Josquius]

It must be very strange to be an educated Chinese person. To be fully aware of the event and to know about the big protest in Hong Kong but...to not be able to speak about it.

[Viking]

I was 14 in 1989. On the morning after the massacre my dad woke me up at 5 in the morning and told me to get dressed and come down to the bin-guan (official guest house) dining room. Me, my brother, mother and father did. Down there was a very tired and very frightened man. He was a guest of the university, like my dad, but he'd been in Beijing at the square the night before. He told us that soldiers had started shooting people and that he had run for his life. He had just come to warn us and he was here only to pick up his stuff and go to the embassy to get out of the country.

On TV there the news was showing storied of soldiers sweeping the streets clean: literally. Groups of soldiers with brooms sweeping the streets. The news anchor looked strange, we heard from Chinese friends that her husband had been on the square and had died. The streets on campus were empty, people stayed in. The only people to talk to us were the regular working class people who were always friendly and were just as friendly. The students were all gone, they were hiding, or they were afraid of associating with foreigners.

There had been protests on campus in the weeks before the massacre and me and my brother had wandered around them experiencing the hope. I know that sounds like something only George W Bush might say, but that is what I was doing. Experiencing hope. The hope for the future and the spirit of freedom as seen in the eyes of everybody around me. Everybody wanted to know what it was like to live in the west. How did elections work, could you pick your own job, did you have to bribe the doctor to get an appointment and the most popular: can I practice my English with you?

Afterwards, nothing, nada crickets. The students had organized an "English Park" at one of the local parks once a week and I went to the first park afterwards and only one student was there. He looked forlorn, lonely and afraid. Our university minder (a post grad at the department my dad was teaching at) suggested that the student might get into trouble if we spoke to him. He didn't initiate conversation with us.

That night the army surrounded the campus and sieged the student union on the other campus. In Tien-Jin there are two universities and their campuses are adjacent. That stand off was resolved peacefully. We were told the soldiers there were from Tien-Jin explaining why. We were later told that in Bei-Jing they had brought in peasants from he countryside when the Bei-Jing soldiers refused.

After the siege at the student union things calmed down. Students were still nowhere to be seen, but there were invitations to dinner from academic staff. In hindsight the strange thing is that no solders were ever seen in Tien-Jin.

The Danish embassy offered to evacuate us along with the other Danes, but ultimately my parents decided to stay. We were used by local party officials for propaganda. "Hey, we managed to keep our furriners from fleeing in terror. Look how great we are." I got drunk by for the first time. A Coal-Gas refinery manager sat next to me at a dinner for some party officials and he kept filling my glass with Mao-Tai. I ate frogs legs for the first and only time.

We went to Bei-Dai-Hu and were the only guests at the resort hotel set aside for foreigners. The beach set aside for foreigners was overrun with locals, who had to walk a mile to the beach from their hotels. They didn't seem to mind us. Took a tour of Lin-Biaos Villa and museum of corruption. The guide absentmindedly told us that all major party officials have houses in the area.

We went to Xi-An and saw the terracotta soldiers in an empty hall with no tourists. The same for the Great Wall at Shang-Hai-Guan, no tourists. The same for the Forbidden City itself. Tian-An-Men was off limits though. We drove past it and there were soldiers everywhere. Literally a man with a gun on every corner.

This was the formative event of my life. It is the prism for how I decide right from wrong and good from bad. I have seen the face of evil and I have seen the light of freedom, all in the span of a few weeks. We were a family of social democrats before this and afterwards we became a family of classical liberals, especially on human rights and freedom. Every thing is very  black and white for me because of this. I don't live in a post modern world where everybody has his own truth and that truth is valid. I live in a world where there is right and wrong. The Tian-An-Men Massacre taught me that. 

[Syt]

Thanks for sharing, Viking, that's a really interesting story.

[Viking]

Thanks for sharing, Viking, that's a really interesting story.

Personally I'm disaspointed there isn't a hell for Li Peng's Beijing Clique to rot in. We are doing the chinese a great service by remembering. We should remember the protests for their potential not by their failure.

[Josquius]

Would China have developed so well had it democratised though?
I would tend towards no....and its democracy would probably have ended up on a par with the Ukraine at best.
But that's just a wild guess.

[Syt]

Personally I'm disaspointed there isn't a hell for Li Peng's Beijing Clique to rot in. We are doing the chinese a great service by remembering. We should remember the protests for their potential not by their failure.

The Chinese appear to respectfully disagree:

China lodges diplomatic protest with US over Tiananmen remarks

China has lodged a diplomatic protest over US remarks on the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, Reuters said. The White House had honored those who were killed in the action to crush the protests and said it would support the rights that the protesters sought. China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Beijing was "strongly dissatisfied" and "firmly opposed" to the US statement, Xinhua reported, adding that it had "lodged solemn representations" with Washington.

I read an article that figures that there can be no official remembering or reevaluation in China before the last of the ones in power at the time have died. I'm not that optimistic, though.

[Viking]

The chinese still haven't been able to admit that "The Great Leap Forward" wasn't. Personally I think it is right of the US and any other country to disagree with the chinese government by asserting that murdering peaceful protesters is wrong.

[derspiess]

Would China have developed so well had it democratised though?
I would tend towards no....and its democracy would probably have ended up on a par with the Ukraine at best.
But that's just a wild guess.

I think you're right.  I'm still sort of the opinion that a truly democratic China would be a basket case, at least for a while.

[Barrister]

Would China have developed so well had it democratised though?
I would tend towards no....and its democracy would probably have ended up on a par with the Ukraine at best.
But that's just a wild guess.

I think you're right.  I'm still sort of the opinion that a truly democratic China would be a basket case, at least for a while.

Why?  Democracy seems to have worked wonders in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Ukraine and Russia were somewhat hamstrung by being under communism for am extra generation or two.  In China you still had a generation of people who had grown up before communism was imposed.

[Jacob]

Fascinating story Viking... pretty intense.

[derspiess]

Why?  Democracy seems to have worked wonders in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Bit of a scale difference there, dontchathink?  Plus a truly democratic China would have to reconcile somehow with independence movements in Tibet and East Turkestan.  Even in the best scenario it would be problematic.