MCLC: dissident and tycoon spar over 'massacre'

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: rowena he <rowenahe at gmail.com>
Subject: dissident and tycoon spar over 'massacre'
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Source: Focus Taiwan (2/1/12):
http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?Type=aALL&TNo=&ID=201202
010034

Chinese dissident, Taiwanese tycoon spar over 'Tiananmen massacre'
By Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, Feb. 1 (CNA) An exiled student leader of the 1989
pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square in Beijing said Wednesday he
wants to meet with a wealthy Taiwanese entrepreneur to settle a
dispute over whether the Tiananmen Incident in 1989 was a massacre.

Wang Dan, who now lives in Taiwan, said on his Facebook page that he
hoped to challenge the views of Tsai Eng-meng, chairman of the Want
Want Group -- which owns many major media outlets, including the China
Times, a Taipei-based daily newspaper.

Wang called for a boycott of the China Times last month after Tsai
appeared to have denied in an interview with the Washington Post that
the 1989 crackdown in Beijing constituted a massacre.

According to the newspaper, Tsai said he was struck by footage at the
time of a lone protester standing in front of a People's Liberation
Army tank and said the fact that the man wasn't killed showed that
reports of a massacre were not true.

"I realized that not that many people could really have died," Tsai
was quoted as saying, which sparked the opposition of Wang and
hundreds of other netizens.

"I am furious about Tsai's comments on the Tiananmen protest, which
are misleading," Wang said on Jan. 23, two days after the Post
interview was published.

In response, Tsai said in an open letter posted on Wang's Facebook
page Tuesday that his remarks had been distorted and taken out of
context by the Washington Post and, he asked Wang to check the
recording of the interview with Post reporter Andrew Higgins.

"Do you think I would ever make such a thoughtless 'simple' remark
during an interview with international media?" said Tsai, who was also
cited in the article as saying that the unification of China and
Taiwan was inevitable and something he really hoped he could see.

Tsai, however, did offer in his letter to apologize if anything he
said in the full body of the interview was disrespectful to "mainland
compatriots who suffered during the Tiananmen Incident" or hurt his
Taiwanese compatriots.

Acknowledging Tsai's comment, Wang said he would reserve judgment and
hoped to find out if the Washington Post report did take Tsai's
comments out of context as claimed.

Meanwhile, Wang said the Taipei Society, a local group of
intellectuals he belongs to, has been in contact with the China Times
to try to arrange for him to exchange ideas with Tsai.