MCLC: suppression of 6/4 memory

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: wangchaohua <sm.ca.wangchaohua at gmail.com>
Subject: suppression of 6/4 memory
***********************************************************

Source: Al Jazeera (6/4/14):
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/6/china-tiananmen-squaremassacre
studentprotests.html

By attempting to suppress the memory of the popular protest, China ensures
there will be another
by Chaohua Wang

June 4 marks the 25th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre
that shocked the world. A quarter century ago, a series of student
protests broke out in China’s capital, Beijing, in mid-April. They soon
spread to more than 100 cities in the country. After nearly two months,
the popular protest came to an abrupt end, with brutal military assaults
resulting in the deaths of at least hundreds of civilians. To date, there
has never been an independent investigation. People who have tried to
collect information about the victims of the June 4 crackdown have been
charged with stealing or leaking so-called state secrets.

No one expected that the protests would rapidly explode into a nationwide
movement. Yet in the early months of 1989, an edgy atmosphere had already
permeated university campuses and the intellectual circles that gathered
around key players in the launch of China’s Reform Era in 1978–79. Deng
Xiaoping’s government, struggling to push its economic reforms the
previous year — inflation was up to 19 percent — had tightened control
over speeches and publications. Its message was clear: Keep quiet and
follow orders, and “we” will sort out these economic problems for “you.”
But it was precisely this sort of tone — in stark contrast to the “thought
liberation” spirit that a decade earlier paved the way for the opening up
and reform that marked the New Era (xin shiqi) of the 1980s — that made
people agitated.

This was also what brought me into the protest. At the time a graduate
student studying modern literature at the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences in Beijing, I hoped to see real changes in China’s public life.
Changes that would ensure that popular voices could participate in
political decision making and move the country toward democratization.
Changes that could be brought about by the massive demonstrations.

Erosion of civil rights

Two interrelated issues in particular aroused people’s defiant spirits
that year.

The first was a yearning to be respected as an independent-minded citizen.
This desire was best captured in a song written by the famous rock singer
Cui Jian, who performed it in mid-May to roaring cheers from thousands of
the student hunger strikers occupying Tiananmen Square. Its lyrics allude
ironically to the party’s thought control:

With a piece of red cloth, it was you the other day
Covered my eyes and also the sky
You asked me what I see
I answered that I have seen happiness
The sensation made me so cozy
That I forgot I had nowhere to live
You asked where else I’d want to go
I said I’ve fallen in love with your road
Seeing neither you nor any road
And my hand being clutched by you
You asked what I was thinking
I said I want simply to follow you

The question that the song asked (and that we demonstrators were asking
ourselves) was, were we going to live like this forever, blinded by
authoritarian control and unable to make our own judgments? The answer was
obvious to all.

The second issue was an explicit political demand, focusing specifically
on the erosion of the civil rights guaranteed by the constitution of the
People’s Republic. The constitution, revised at the beginning of the
Reform Era and then ratified by the National People’s Congress in 1982,
was both the fruition of the liberating spirit of the early 1980s and a
document consolidating Deng’s return to power; it also ensured a long
honeymoon period of popular support.

The official reaction to the Tiananmen anniversary, worse than on this
date five years ago, is cruel, arrogant and counterproductive to the
regime’s own survival.

But things had changed dramatically by 1989. People caught hints of
imminent betrayal of their earlier support. Outspoken intellectuals were
expelled from the party. Debates over the proposed development of the
Three Gorges Dam were banned from publication. And then in April the death
of a former party general secretary, Hu Yaobang, triggered the student
protests. Hu had been purged two years earlier for being too liberal and
too soft toward critics of the party. While mourning him, young faculty
members and students from the Politics and Law University of China made a
huge placard, holding it on their shoulders through many marches and
rallies that spring. Inscribed on it in large characters were words taken
from Article 35 of the new constitution, which grants citizens of the PRC
“the freedom of speech, publication, assembly, association, demonstration
and protest.” 

Erasure and eruption

The bloody crackdown in June 1989 ushered in a period of high economic
growth under authoritarian rule. The government deployed every means
possible to try to erase people’s memory of the Tiananmen protest and the
massacre.

Because of my involvement in the demonstrations, my name appeared on the
government’s most-wanted list. I was lucky to be able to flee the country
after eight months in hiding. Many of my fellow protesters were killed,
injured or imprisoned for long terms. Some of their families experience
continued police harassment even today. Such tactics have aimed to create
fear and enforce a total silence concerning recent history. Many young
people born after 1989 know little about it.

Yet the actual situation on the ground is not always what the party
censors would like to see. The dual desires for independence and political
rights are living on as hidden flames, occasionally rekindled, especially
when conflicts arise between citizens and officials. Such conflicts are
common in a country that has witnessed a growing income gap and social
polarization. The New Citizen Movement, initiated by the law scholar and
civil activist Xu Zhiyong two years ago and aimed at raising civil rights
consciousness, helped the children of China’s vast army of migrant workers
receive education away from their hometowns. In a manifesto written in
2012, Xu explicated the mission of the movement in a succinct statement:
“Let us start from this very moment. Let us speak out firmly and proudly
[about] the identity that ought to belong to us all: I am a citizen; we
are citizens.”

On the other hand, the government has continued its slide into tyranny
since 1989. The cruel logic enforced by the military crackdown has
gradually crystallized alongside China’s economic growth over the past 25
years. After two rounds of once-a-decade leadership succession, the
country’s chiefs have only become lazier at heeding public concerns:
Coercive power has become their most convenient and frequent choice when
encountering a challenging situation. They have myopically focused on an
aggressive installation of a top-down “stability maintenance” security
apparatus, which enjoys a bigger budget than national defense. Citizens’
rights and demands, including the memory of Tiananmen, have been slighted
and manipulated, often for gains in factional infighting.

It is against this backdrop that the charge of “disturbing public order”
has been excessively trotted out to send activists such as Xu to prison.
Hundreds, if not thousands, have been rounded up ahead of the June 4
anniversary. The official reaction, worse than on this date five years
ago, is cruel, arrogant and counterproductive to the regime’s own
survival. Vested interests corrupting the party’s polity have multiplied
to such an extent that we have reason to expect large-scale social clashes
in the near future. We are living to preserve the memory of Tiananmen. And
it will haunt the regime to its end.

Chaohua Wang was among the 21 students "most wanted" by the Chinese
government after the Tiananmen massacre. She is an independent scholar and
currently a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.