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Hong Kong stands up

Two decades ago on this very evening the world was watching in hope, anguish, and ultimately disbelief as a peaceful demonstration in support of a better tomorrow was about to end in bloody tragedy.  The Chinese leaders have been trying to wash the blood from their hands ever since.

The indiscriminate massacre of innocent civilians twenty years ago in the heart of China’s capital cannot be quite so readily extinguished from the records as the CCP leadership and their apologists would like. This is not to say that the efforts made in that direction have been without success, rendering 1.3 billion people mute with apathy, fear, and ignorance.

History has yet to measure the debt of gratitude that all Chinese people owe to that brave outpost of residents in Hong Kong. For they, and they alone among the wider Chinese community, have never forgotten. They choose not to forget in defiance of Beijing’s revisionist policy, for they love their country as much as any Chinese citizens do and appreciate the importance of truth and accountability better than their mainland counterparts.

The bloody end to the ’89 mass protest is, and – so long as 6/4 is denied its place in Chinese history – will remain, a litmus test of China’s willingness to embrace responsible governance and grant its citizens, among other basic dignities, the right of free expression.

It’s difficult to imagine that China could have made greater economic progress had 6/4 ended differently. Sadly, among so many mainland Chinese who have found their circumstances much improved in the last twenty years, this is proof positive that the government was justified in its actions 20 years ago. This illogical thinking is the way that many Chinese try to rationalise the guilt of their silence. Martin Luther King Jr said it best:

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

Others will write far more eloquent and moving memorials to the fallen of 6/4 this week. I will link to their sites as the articles and op-eds begin to appear – a kind of roll of honour. I salute them all for remembering. But most of all I salute the people of Hong Kong, because it is only through their efforts in keeping the flame alive that the Chinese people will finally find, and accept, closure on this issue.

Don’t forget to light your candles.

Roll of Honour (in no particular order)

Boston Globe (must see pictures)

Froog

LA times

Peking Duck

The Guardian

Philip Cunningham

The Useless Tree

China Digital Times

James Fallows

Ai Wei Wei

BBC (+video)

John Simpson

Dan Edwards

Black and White Cat

Chinageeks

Frog in a well

The Australian

Timesonline

Amnesty International

New York Times

Invisible Tibet

Granite Studio

Under the Jacaranda Tree

James Fallows

Zhongnanhai blog

Time China blog

Frontline

Guardian (+video interviews/footage)

http://minzhuwansui.blogspot.com/

China Beat continue their excellent series of excerpts from Philip Cunningham‘s soon-to-be-released Tiananmen moon, with the latest installment shedding some light on the author’s role as interpreter for a BBC camera crew, while at the same time describing the moment he encountered Chai Ling (I assume for the first time) and other student leaders in the lobby of the Beijing Hotel at midnight. Earlier that day Cunningham had befriended a student from Xi’an, Wang Li, on the Square.

Wang Li and Hu gulp down the juice and ravage the snacks as if they had just ended a private hunger strike. While they eat, I look at the other table where a group of four young people are talking in low whispers next to the ornate ghost screen that blocked view from the entrance.

“Listen, troops have arrived northeast of Beijing. There are thousands of soldiers, tanks, and I heard there are trucks full of ammunition,” Wang Li says, as if trying to earn his keep.
“How do you know?”
“We were there,” he says with a hint of pride. And then anticipating further questions, he adds, “We know a journalist needs evidence, so we want to go back and take pictures.”
“Isn’t that kind of risky?”
“No, we must do it, Jin. Can I borrow your camera?” He reads the doubt on my face. “You can keep my ID card until I return with the camera.”
“No, no, that’s not necessary. I trust you,” I respond, using the immortal words of someone about to be conned. Actually I didn’t trust him. If anything his offer of the ID made me a little suspicious. If he were really a student why was he flashing his ID around? No one else did that.

“I’ll tell you what, tomorrow you can shower and nap in my room if you want, okay?”
Even as the words left my mouth I wasn’t sure why I made the offer, but it got me off the hook tonight. And I did feel for these ragamuffins. We shared a powerful curiosity in common; we were interested in finding out what was really going on, but we weren’t journalists, not them, not me. I couldn’t forget how I was almost reduced to sleeping on the streets during the early vigils at Tiananmen.
“Can you give me some film, too?” he pleads, revealing sharper bargaining skills as my skepticism softened.
“Yeah, okay. By the way,” I ask, pointing to the figures in the shadows about 20 feet away, “Who are those people sitting at the table over there?”
“They’re our student leaders. That’s Wang Dan, Wuerkaixi, Chai Ling and Feng Congde.”
“The student leaders?” I ask in disbelief. Isn’t this a government hotel?

We got up to leave. I walked past the other table to get a closer look. The quiet conference in progress momentarily went silent as we walked by. On the way out, I give my camera to Wang Li, not sure if I’d see it or him again. Even so I felt a pang of guilt. Is it right for me to encourage him to go running after troops?

Intriguing stuff. I recommend Cunningham’s own serialisation, updated as a twenty-years-ago-today chronology, not least because of some of the amazing pictures he captured at that time.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/

It could be time for a long overdue reckoning.

The Timesonline reports that the people’s hero Zhao Ziyang managed to secretly record his account of the events of 20 years ago despite having been purged and forced to live out his days under the watchful, punitive eye of the paranoid state: 

The memoirs of the Chinese Communist Party leader purged for favouring the students during the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square – prepared with the utmost secrecy during years of house arrest – will finally been revealed.

So sensitive is this document, the first memoir ever to be written by such a senior Chinese party official, that even its existence had been kept a closely guarded secret. Speculation had been rife during his nearly 16 years of house arrest and after his death in 2005 as to whether the man with the most intimate knowledge of the behind-the-scenes machinations that led up to the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 3-4 1989 had provided his own account of those dramatic days.

The record made by Zhao Ziyang, Secretary General of the Communist Party from 1987 until his fall from power in 1989, are to be published this month as Prisoner of the State: The secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang.

Now let’s wait for the ‘hurt feelings’ or ‘interfering in our affairs’ squeals from China’s leaders. Read more of Jane Macartney’s report here.

Update

Jeremiah at Granite Studio has injected some great humour into Zhao’s possible embarrassing revelations. He also points to the NYT’s site where they are running excerpts of Zhao’s Prisoner of the State.

Update 2

Richard of Peking Duck fame has written a guest blog for Global Post in which he praises Philip Cunningham’s observations on the release of Zhao’s memoirs. Cunningham takes a swipe at Beijing’s revisionist policy on Tiananmen:

To blame it on the students, as many young people in China do today, is to fall for a propaganda line, to take one’s eye off the ball.

The value of releasing Mr Zhao’s belated memoir, which goes for the jugular by singling out a hard-line clique within the CCP, on this, the 20th anniversary of an unnecessary tragedy, is to get the public eye back on the culpability of those most culpable.

And well he might – he was most definitely there.

http://www.theage.com.au/

As the early dawn began to light up Beijing on the morning of 4th June 20 years ago, the tragic scene on the left was a shocking reality for the staff at hospitals all over the city.

Unless you adhere to the CCP handbook, that is; in which case nothing happened and anything that suggests otherwise must be hidden at all costs.

In a country where filial piety is valued highly, one would think that a man attempting to visit his ailing parents would be lauded. But instead of allowing human compassion to win the day, the Chinese government decided to detain him without charge. The reason? He was in Beijing in 1989 for the event that never happened.

This report from Yahoo News gives more details:

BEIJING – An exiled Chinese dissident and a leading figure in the 1989 pro-democracy movement has been detained trying to enter mainland China from Hong Kong and held without charge for more than six months, his family said Wednesday.

The phone call from police was the first official acknowledgment of Zhou’s detention. Shenzhen officials repeatedly denied having him in custody, Sufen said from the provincial capital of Chengdu.

It was the second time Zhou Yongjun, a permanent U.S. resident, has been detained while trying to enter China to visit his family. He spent more than two years in a Chinese labor camp in the late 1990s after being detained in Shenzhen, a southeastern city next to Hong Kong.

Zhou’s elder sister, Zhou Sufen, said Wednesday that her brother disappeared in October last year after entering the mainland from Hong Kong. Police informed her Monday that her brother had been transferred from a detention center in Shenzhen to Suining city in the family’s home province of Sichuan.

What is wrong with those fuckers?

I know, I know; it comes as no surprise that they behave in this way, and yet I cling to the expectation that sooner or later they’ll react in a less thuggish and infantile manner. It looks like it’s going to be later. Much later.

Update

The latest of The China Beat’s excellent series of excerpts taken from Phil Cunningham’s forthcoming Tiananmen Moon is now available. Well worth a visit.