June 4th Anniversary Comes and Goes
Another June 4th has come and gone, and much to the displeasure of China, what happened at Tiananmen Square 18 years ago yesterday has not been forgotten. Many had hoped that the new China, the Olympic China, would do things a bit differently this year to show to the rest of the world that it is making strides to correct the the wrongs of its past and prove that that was then and this is now. Instead, China demonstrated yesterday that, as another year passes since the Beijing democracy riots of 1989, the nation’s leaders are still unwilling to own up to a tragedy and that the gap between reality and historical revision continues to grow wider.
According to media reports, June 4, 2007, began like all the anniversaries for the last 18 years. Authorities ordered increased security in Tiananmen Square to suppress potential protests, tourists gathered to observe the daily flag-raising ceremony and paramilitary police (photo) and plain-clothes officers patrolled the square listening in on conversations and snuffing out any public displays of commemoration to those victims of the 1989 “crackdown.” I will refrain from using the m-word. You know, the one that ends in “-assacre.” In Tiananmen Square Monday, there were no reports of protest.
The only place where China permits public commemoration of June 4th is Hong Kong, where in each of the 18 years since the crackdown, a mass candlelight vigil honors those who died in what China still calls the “counterrevolutionary riot.” As promised, when Hong Kong was handed to China in 1997, Beijing respects those civil liberties granted under British rule. In Victoria Park in downtown Hong Kong, thousands assembled to light candles. In an AP story that ran in the International Herald Tribune Monday, one attendee was quoted as saying, “The June 4th incident is a tragedy for China. We need to vindicate it.”
Perhaps the most interesting story concerning the Tiananmen anniversary occurred thousands of miles from Beijing in the Sichuan capital of Chengdu. On the lower right corner of page 14 in the Chengdu Evening News there was an ad that read, “Paying tribute to the strong-willed mothers of the June 4th victims.” The ad alluded to the most high-profile group dedicated to the memory of those killed in the riots, the Tiananmen Mothers.
For those that don’t know, the subject of the Tiananmen “crackdown” is by far the most taboo subject in China. Google was not allowed to operate its search engine in mainland China until the internet company agreed to remove information about Tiananmen Square. Likewise, the primary reason for the Wikipedia ban in China is that the open-source online encyclopedia refused to censor its content on the riots. The ad in the Chinese-language paper with a circulation of 200,000 represents a serious breach in China’s policy governing public acknowledgement of the event.
Chinese authorities questioned staff at the newspaper in an attempt to discover who posted the ad and if any journalists took a role in publishing the ad. An anonymous source told Reuters that the ad was placed by a local democratic activist.
The Tiananmen Mothers have been petitioning the Chinese government for years to issue an official report documenting the events of June 4, 1989 and give an official death count for the riot. Needless to say, this has not happened. In the eyes of China’s leaders, the military was justified in killing protestors in that the riots posed a threat to the state. In 2004, China’s President Hu Jintao said that the Tiananmen crackdown was a necessary measure to ensure the economic development and stability China enjoys today. And therein lies the disconnect between China and most other places. And therein lies the reason why human rights groups castigate China and question whether Beijing deserves to hold the 2008 Olympic Games. In the meantime, the world waits patiently for China to admit what really happened on June 4, 1989.
•AP: Tiananmen Square Survivors Seek Reform
•Reuters: China Investigates Tiananmen Newspaper Ad