MCLC: Ma Jian on 6/4

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Ma Jian on 6/4
***********************************************************

Source: The Guardian (6/1/14):
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/01/tiananmen-square-25-years-ever
y-person-victim-massacre

Tiananmen Square 25 years on: 'Every person in the crowd was a victim of
the massacre'
In June 1989, the novelist Ma Jian was among the million freedom
protesters who gathered in Tiananmen Square. The brutal response shocked
the world and crushed the Democracy Movement. But, he says, its spirit and
aspirations live on
By Ma Jian

On 4 June 1989, when the Chinese Communist party (CCP) sent 200,000
soldiers in armoured tanks to suppress the peaceful pro-democracy protest
in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, causing hundreds if not thousands of
fatalities, it was unimaginable to me and most of my compatriots that, 25
years later, this barbaric regime would still be in power, and the
massacre would be rendered a taboo. But despite the party's most ardent
efforts to wipe the episode from history, memories of the massacre refuse
to be crushed. On the milestone 25th anniversary, Tiananmen is more
important than ever.

The death toll of the Tiananmen Democracy Movement may pale in comparison
with the millions who perished in the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural
Revolution. Its significance, however, lies not in the number of
casualties but in the nobility of its aspirations and the power of its
legacy. The CCP and its western apologists like to claim that China, with
its vast population, long, unbroken history and cultural traditions, has
no desire – or indeed need – for constitutional democracy, and is much
better off following its own "exceptional" path of political dictatorship
combined with a market economy. But Tiananmen showed the world that the
Chinese people are no different from everyone else. When given the chance
to express their views freely, they seized it and howled in unison their
desire for democracy, freedom and human rights. Although their
understanding of the concepts was elementary, they instinctively grasped,
like the protesters in Place de la Bastille and Wenceslas Square before
them, that these ideals formed the foundation of any civilised and humane
nation. To claim that the Chinese are unsuited to, or not yet ready for,
democracy and freedom is to view them as less than human beings.

The party leadership insists that it has reached a "clear conclusion" on
Tiananmen: it was a counter-revolutionary riot, involving a tiny minority
of troublemakers, which needed to be crushed to ensure China's future
economic development. This conclusion is clear, but incorrect. The
democracy protests were neither "counter-revolutionary" nor a "riot". They
were a spontaneous mass uprising, a jubilant national awakening, in which
millions of students, workers and professionals gathered peacefully in
public squares around the country for weeks on end to call for rights
guaranteed to them by the constitution: freedom of speech, of the press
and of assembly and freedom to elect their leaders – basic liberties that
the west takes for granted. They were among the most orderly, restrained
and self-disciplined protests the world has seen. Student marshals
maintained crowd control; armies of volunteers distributed food and drink
and provided free medical care. In the madness of 20th-century China, the
Tiananmen protests were a moment of sublime sanity, when the individual
emerged from the somnolent collective and found their true voice.

In this atmosphere of freedom, people used their innate creativity and
intelligence to challenge and question state power. Teenagers strummed Bob
Dylan ballads around campfires and danced in the dark.The Beijing Symphony
Orchestra brought its instruments to the square and gave an impromptu
performance of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. Art students erected a replica of
the Statue of Liberty right opposite the huge portrait of Chairman Mao on
the square's northern edge. The student leader, Wu'er Kaixi, rebuked
Premier Li Peng on national TV, dressed in striped pyjamas. In a makeshift
Democracy University, professors gave seminars on Thomas Paine and the
French revolution. When the government rejected pleas for dialogue,
hundreds of students tied white bandanas around their heads and went on
hunger strike. On 3 June, Liu Xiaobo, then a lecturer at the Beijing
Normal University, staged his own hunger strike on the square with the
economist Zhou Duo, the rock star Hou Dejian and party member Gao Xin, to
protest against martial law and call for a peaceful transition to
democracy.

'A moment of sublime sanity' … a hunger protester at Tiananmen.
Photograph: Stuart Franklin/MagnumTiananmen revealed the true face not
only of the Chinese people, but of the CCP as well, which was exposed as a
regime prepared to massacre its own unarmed citizens in order to maintain
its power. It is both mistaken and morally repugnant to argue that the
deaths were necessary to "re-establish order" and guarantee future growth.
Taiwan is clear proof that the Chinese can successfully combine democracy
with capitalism. China's rapid economic rise over the past 25 years is
thanks in most part not to the Communist party but to non-unionised
Chinese workers prepared to labour in poor conditions for low wages. An
accountable, democratic government would have no doubt achieved a less
frenzied, more sustainable economic rise, with less corruption and
environmental devastation.

Until now, the only apparent victor of Tiananmen has been the CCP. The
massacre destroyed its moral legitimacy, but like a resilient virus, it
has mutated in unforeseen ways to ensure its survival. Under the slogan of
authoritarian capitalism, it has filled the bellies of the Chinese people
while shackling their minds; encouraged a lust for material wealth while
stifling the desire to reflect on the past and ask questions about the
present. But the party's victory is a hollow one. Its near psychotic
repression of any mention of Tiananmen reveals its guilt for past
bloodshed and terror of the truth.

Meanwhile the list of victims of Tiananmen continues to grow. Wu'er Kaixi
and other student leaders still live in exile. Liu Xiaobo, despite winning
the Nobel peace prize in 2010, is serving an 11-year prison sentence for
state subversion, while his wife Liu Xia  is under house arrest. Ahead of
each anniversary of the massacre, activists are  routinely rounded up, but
this year the crackdown on dissent has been fiercer than ever. On 24
April, a 70-year-old journalist, Gao Yu, was arrested, together with her
son and four cats, for disclosing a party memorandum that listed seven
"unmentionable topics" the press were told to avoid, including universal
values, press freedom, citizens' rights and the party's historical
aberrations. She is now criminally detained and her son is missing. On 3
May, a seminar was held by 15 intellectuals in a private home in Beijing
to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the massacre. Three days later,
five of the 15 who attended, including the prominent rights lawyer Pu
Zhiqiang and the scholar Xu Youyu, both of whom have serious medical
conditions, were criminally detained for "picking quarrels and provoking
troubles". Public discussion of Tiananmen has never been tolerated, butnow
even private commemoration is outlawed.

 
A sea of student protesters gather in Tiananmen square, 4 May 1989.
Photograph: Peter TurnleyFive years ago, I met the artist Chen Guang in
his Beijing flat, and he talked to me about the trauma he suffered as a
young PLA soldier in 1989 when his unit was ordered to expel the students
from the square with assault rifles and bayonets, then later burn the
tents, journals, clothes and banners flattened by the tanks. Before the
20th anniversary of the massacre, he was able to exhibit on his website –
for the few days before censors closed it down – paintings inspired by
photographs he had taken of soldiers and tanks on the square. This year he
has not been so lucky. On 29 April, in front of a few friends in the
Songzhuang artists' village, he donned a face mask and hurled whitewash
over the dates 1989 and 2014 painted on a brick wall. A week later he was
placed in detention. Three years ago, the artist Hua Yong went to the
square, punched himself in the nose and with the blood that poured from it
wrote on a concrete paving stone the numbers six and four, the common
shorthand for 4 June. Plainclothes police dragged him away immediately.
Two years ago, Hua Yong returned to the square, cut his finger and with
the blood wrote six and four on his forehead. He was arrested and sent to
a labour camp for 15 months.

These civil rights activists, lawyers, journalists and artists are the
finest legacy and true victors of the Tiananmen Movement. Although they
form a tiny minority in a country of 1.3 billion people, they are its
greatest hope. By fighting peacefully for constitutional rights and
refusing to forget the tragedies of the past, they show the way to a
better future. Their courage is slowly shaking young Chinese from their
political apathy. Since Pu Zhiqiang's arrest, China's internet has been
ablaze with coded messages of support.

My most vivid memory of the
Tiananmen days is the time I stood high on the Monument to the People's
Heroes one afternoon in late May and looked down on a crowd of more than a
million people assembled in the square. Every face beamed with hope and
joy. The colourful swathe of humanity looked as peaceful as a meadow of
wildflowers. There was a euphoric sense that after decades of tyranny, the
Chinese people had found the courage to take full control of their lives
and attempt to change the fate of their nation. Every person in that crowd
was later a victim of the massacre, whether they lost their life on 4 June
or survived, their ideals shattered and their soul scarred by fear.

Tiananmen was a defining moment for my generation. More recently it has
changed my life once again: since the Chinese edition of my Tiananmen
novel, Beijing Coma, was published in Taiwan three years ago, the
authorities have banned me from returning to the mainland. On 3 June this
year, I will attend a Tiananmen seminar in Sweden and place an empty chair
where the journalist Gao Yu would have sat. On 4 June, back in London, I
will phone my friend, the economist Zhou Duo, who as usual will be marking
the day with a private hunger strike in his Beijing home. I will light
candles in honour of those who died in the massacre and the Chinese
dissidents who are in jail or under house arrest. I will think of the
vast, jubilant crowds that filled the square in 1989 and remind myself
that the values they espoused are universal, and mightier than the tyranny
that still strives to suppress them. Then I will hope that before another
25 years pass, the mausoleum and portrait of the mass murderer Mao will
have been removed for ever from Tiananmen Square and replaced by a
Monument to the Heroes of 1989, and that the Chinese people will be free
to assemble there, punch themselves in the nose if they wish, mourn all
the victims of past tragedies, discuss liberty and democracy, and sing
their odes to joy.

© Ma Jian
Translated by Flora Drew