MCLC: right to remember

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: right to remember
***********************************************************

Source: China Change (8/23/14):
http://chinachange.org/2014/08/23/without-the-right-to-remember-there-can-b
e-no-freedom-to-forget/

Without the Right to Remember There Can Be No Freedom to Forget
By Chang Ping
 

(This is Chang Ping’s rebuttal to Frank Sieren’s Let Fairness Replace
Anger <http://www.dw.de/fairness-statt-wut/a-17702613> [link in German],
the second round of the Sieren vs. Chang Ping debate in June this year in
Deutsche Welle about the June 4th massacre in 1989 in China. Read
Tiananmen Massacre not a “Passing Lapse” of the Chinese Government
<http://chinachange.org/2014/07/08/tiananmen-massacre-not-a-passing-lapse-o
f-the-chinese-government/>, Chang Ping’s rebuttal to Frank Sieren’s  From
Tian’anmen To Leipzig
<http://www.dw.de/von-tiananmen-nach-leipzig/a-17682980> [link in German],
the first round of the debate. – The Editor)
 

Matthias von Hein, a Deutsche Welle (DW) commentator, quotes George
Orwell’s “1984” in his essay on the Tiananmen massacre anniversary: “He
who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present
controls the past.” The Chinese Communist regime is in the process of
carrying out this aphorism. I am therefore compelled to engage DW’s
Beijing correspondent, Mr. Frank Sieren, on the history of the massacre.

Responding to objections I raised in a previous article, Mr. Sieren
published “Replace Anger with Justice.” In addition to insisting in this
rather brief piece that “it is incontrovertible that the 1989 incident is
a lapse in the history of New China,” he puts forth assessments on several
historical and contemporary questions of great significance. By asserting
that “many Chinese wish to forget the Tiananmen massacre” and that
“consumerism appeals to Chinese people more than memories,” Mr. Sieren
cedes a wide berth for me to take this debate further.

No One Can Escape History

I am quite taken aback to see a German author claim that “many people wish
to forget history.” In Germany, I have interviewed many organizations and
individuals who study and manage issues of history, including the Federal
Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship; The Foundation for
Remembrance, Accountability and theFuture; the former Chief Prosecutor of
Berlin, Christoph Schaefgen, who led the indictment of East German leaders
including Erich Honecker and Egon Krenz; the head of the Stasi archives,
Roland Jahn; and ordinary Germans I meet in daily life. Throughout these
interviews, everyone keeps bringing up the same
word,Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or “coming to terms with the past.” It’s a
word that keeps simplistic evasions of truth at bay, and inspires the
utmost respect for the sincerity of German efforts at reexamining their
own history.

When it comes to familiar quotations, this one from the Czech exile in
France, Milan Kundera, is close to Chinese hearts: “The struggle of man
against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” His works
chronicle the agonized struggle of Czech intellectuals against the
mandatory oblivion under Communist dictatorship. Nor is Kundera alone.
From Solzhenitsyn to Herta Müller, the list of writers of conscience who
fight to defend memories of what ought not to be forgotten grows long.

Lies Are Spawned by FearI am well aware that you cannot find scenes of
such conscientious struggle in today’s China. On the contrary, there
aremany who are reluctant to openly discuss the Tiananmen massacre and the
Cultural Revolution, stressing the need to “drop the baggage and look
forward.” Even those who are deeply dissatisfied with the status quo are
mostly unwilling to put up a fight. Fighting back is futile, and the only
way out is to put up and to put it out of your mind. Those who study
historyknow that this is far from unique to China; in the former East
Germany and other Communist countries things were exactly the same. Havel,
the dramatist, dissident and eventual Czech President, captures in his
play, “The Power of the Powerless,” a particular ludicrous moment in time:
The manager of a grocery store, out of his own initiative, puts up a
slogan on his shop window: “Proletarians of the world, unite!” Are we to
believe that he is personally invested in the global solidarity of
workers? Hardly. The truth is, in an autocratic society teeming with
desperation, lies confer a sense of security.

If surveys were conducted in China during the Cultural Revolution or, for
that matter, today’s North Korea, the vast majority is likely to describe
their lives as blissfully happy. Can we therefore conclude that the
Chinese and North Koreans much prefer authoritarianism, and we are to
honor their “right to happiness?” The dissatisfaction Germans express
toward theirown government must be greater than that in China. Does this
mean China’s system is better than the German one?

Commemoration, Not Forgetting, Is Banned

Moreover, it is impossible to obtain statistics to support the conclusion
that “many Chinese wish to forget the Tiananmen massacre.” What we do know
is that the propaganda department of the Chinese Communist Party would
consider all such assessments a joke. I personally attended Party
propaganda meetings, and witnessed an extraordinary and palpable
nervousness whenever the massacre anniversary drew near. Party officials
were convinced that even a slight slack in thecontrols would see public
opinion break through and bring the truth to light. For the CCP’s controls
on free speech are in every way comparable to those achieved in the
Eastern bloc countries of the Soviet era.

Of course people have the right to choose to forget. However, it is
worthwhile to consider this thought with which I sign off all my posts in
Chinese social media: “Without the freedom to criticize, compliments are
worthless.” Rights are theoutcome of free choice. In a country where
people have no right to commemorate, it is not only a luxury to speak
about the right to forget, but a downright act of collusion with the
oppressor. In a political environment where people are arrested and
sentenced for going to a commemorative event held at a private residence,
Mr. Sieren’s statement that “just as you cannot forbid people to
commemorate, you cannot forbid them to forget” has no basis in reality.
Such a position is not as rational as it strives to appear, and is
regrettably lacking from a humanitarian standpoint.

Chang Ping (长平) was  former chief commentator and news director of
Southern Weekend (《南方周末》).  He writes columns for the South China
Morning 
Post, Deutsche Welle, and a number of Chinese language websites. Forced to
leave China and then Hong Kong, he currently lives in Germany.
 

(Translated by Louisa Chiang)
Chinese original 
<http://www.dw.de/%E6%B2%A1%E6%9C%89%E7%BA%AA%E5%BF%B5%E6%9D%83%E5%88%A9%E8
%B0%88%E4%BD%95%E9%81%97%E5%BF%98%E8%87%AA%E7%94%B1/a-17719642>