Keeping the memory of Tiananmen alive
As the rest of the world recalls the shocking events of 1989, China still forbids citizens from mentioning the crackdown on student protesters, writes Malcolm Moore
SEVENTEEN-year-old Jiang Jielian was one of the first to die. A bullet punctured his left lung as he scrambled for cover in a flowerbed near Muxidi Bridge. “Run!” he said to his friends as he crumpled to the ground. “I’ve been hit.”
It was just after 11pm on June 3 1989 when troops from the 38th Corps of the People’s Liberation Army moved down the wide Fuxingmenwai Boulevard on a mission to clear Tiananmen Square. The crackdown continued into the next day.
Half an hour earlier, Jiang had jumped out of a window at his home in west Beijing and joined the protests that came within inches of toppling the Communist Party and that, although ultimately failing in China, paved the way for six Eastern European communist regimes to implode in the next six months.
It was here, in Fuxingmenwai Boulevard rather than in Tiananmen Square itself, where most of the blood was spilt during the violent suppression of the student protests by inexperienced troops ordered to clear the square by dawn.
Yet now, 25 years later, there is no trace of what happened outside apartment block 27 on the boulevard.
The holes caused by ricochets, one of which killed the son of a senior government official in a nearby building, have been plastered over.
Residents in the building have been struck by the same collective amnesia that surrounds all the Communist Party taboos, from the Great Famine to the madness of the Cultural Revolution. “1989, 1989, no, I can’t remember anything that happened here in 1989,” said one elderly lady with a perm. “My recollection is not clear,” said a man in his early 50s.
From witness accounts, however, it is hard to imagine how anyone living in the area could not have seen anything that day. By the time Jiang reached Muxidi Bridge, he was part of a human wall of tens of thousands of people that teargas and rubber bullets had failed to disperse.
Under a hail of rocks, the soldiers fired warning shots in the air before turning their
1989, 1989, no, I can’t remember anything that happened here in 1989,’ said one elderly lady with a perm. ’My recollection is not clear,’ said a man in his early 50s
AK47s directly on the crowd. Trapped by roadblocks they had set up to keep the troops at bay, many of the protesters were trampled in a stampede to escape. It was pointless blood- shed, born as much through accident as design.
“The troops were not trained for the task,” wrote Timothy Brook in his book Quelling the People. “Most were rural boys who had never walked through a city, let alone rehearsed combat in one.”
The security forces were short of rations, trucks and radios, and what riot equipment they had they were not properly trained to use. Riot squads fired tear gas that blew back into their faces. Units came in at the wrong times and places, stumbling over each other, resulting in military casualties.
By the time they reached Muxidi Bridge, their frustration had boiled over.
“Some soldiers who were hit by rocks lost their self-control and began firing wildly at anyone who shouted ‘Fascists!’ or threw rocks,” said the Chinese State Security ministry report that was subsequently leaked. “At least a hundred citizens and students fell to the ground in pools of blood.”
Jiang, a pupil at one of Beijing’s most prestigious high schools, died before he reached hospital. He was cremated a few days later and his parents took his ashes home.
Each year, the Tiananmen Mothers group — 128 parents who lost family members in the massacre — write an open letter calling for the Chinese government to apologise for the bloodshed. Each year there is silence from the Communist Party.
“Those in power can erase memory, but there is a price for this,” said Rowena He, a professor at Harvard University and author of Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China.
“The lack of trust in society is one example. Widespread cynicism is another.”
This year, with the 25th anniversary approaching, the silence has been enforced more diligently than ever. No one speaks openly of the massacre on phones or the internet, or even of its date, instead referring to “the event” or “the anniversary”.
“I see no sign that re-evaluation of the events of June 4 is on the agenda of the party leadership now,” said Andrew Nathan, a professor at Columbia University and the editor of The Tiananmen Papers.
He added that “some people in the party envision that a phase of liberalisation will come eventually and, when it comes, it will have to be re-evaluated, but nobody seems to think that that moment is near at hand”.
“Since the beginning of this year, the surveillance has increased,” said You Weijie, 61, spokesman of the Tiananmen Mothers.
“There is a booth in my compound that monitors everything I do. If I walk too far, they call to ask me where I am going.”
Last year, five members of the group travelled to China’s provinces to hear the stories of families from outside Beijing who had lost children in the massacre. Last week, the group Human Rights in China began publishing the interviews on its website.
“Since Monday, the police started bringing the five of us to police stations to give daily statements,” said You.
But despite the attempts to cow them into silence, the group continued to have an impact, said Gao Yu, a journalist.
“So far, 36 members have passed away, but it doesn’t diminish the group’s power. More and more of the families of the victims are joining.”
The number that died that night is still unknown, with estimates ranging from the hundreds to the thousands.
“We have had three generations of leaders since the protests,” said Lee Cheuk-yan, head of Hong Kong’s Labour Party. “When you look at them, each generation has a tighter grip on human rights than the one before it.
“It is not realistic to think they will admit their mistakes.” — © The Sunday Telegraph, London, with additional reporting by Adam Wu