20 years later: Protests considered taboo

BEIJING – Twenty years ago Thursday, China was at the center of world attention for all the wrong reasons.

It was June 4, 1989, and the seven-week-old student protest occurring in Tiananmen Square had just been brutally crushed. Tales of police brutality were pouring into Western media, often live, and the unofficial death toll was reaching the thousands.
It was a tragedy that reverberated around the world.

The people’s protest
The protests started April 22, 1989, after many Peking University and Tsinghua University students were put off by the Communist Party’s lackluster response to the death of revered pro-democracy and anti-corruption official Hu Yaobang.

The day after his funeral, students marched into Tiananmen Square to mourn. Though largely lacking in general direction, the students soon began to chant for more democratic reform and for open negotiations between student-elected leaders and the government.

By May 4, 100,000 students and workers had marched into Tiananmen and had added the demand of free media to the want of reform. In the days that followed, the government rejected the dialogue, and the leading newspaper of the day, People’s Daily, tried to sway the public toward the government by calling the students “small segments of opportunists” who were “plotting civil unrest.”

On May 13, students began a hunger strike, which was largely
covered by Western media that had been invited into China to cover Mikhail Gorbachev’s state visit.

By May 27, the Goddess of Democracy, a foam and papier-mache statue that was modeled after the Statue of Liberty, was erected in the center of the Square. Directly across from the statue was a large portrait of Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, that hung from the gate of the Forbidden Palace.

Having been run out of Beijing by students, residents and workers, the army was ordered to clear the square by force.

Toll of tragedy
The timeline of the events from the evening of June 3 to the morning of June 4 remain unclear, as official accounts vary greatly from the student accounts.

Officially, no students were killed as the square had been cleared before the tanks were let in. Civilian accounts put the death toll near 3,000.

The army ambushed the square and opened fire on the protesters. Although some students used Molotov cocktails – improvised gasoline bombs – to retaliate, they were largely unarmed.

The tanks quickly crushed protesters, the Goddess of Democracy and all other structures constructed by the students.

By 5:40 a.m. June 4, the square was cleared, and government officials released the following statement: “Tiananmen Square has been returned to the people, but the square is off-limits to the public.”

Protestors remember; schools forget
Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of the protests, and the death of the pro-democracy movement in China.

The square is unmarked, and the incident, locally known as the “June 4th incident,” is a taboo topic.

There are no statues, no memorials and no public remembrances of this occurrence. Discussing the event in mainland China is illegal, and most Web pages pertaining to the protests are blocked.

Chinese officials unblocked the Wikipedia page (English) on the protests in April, but a Chinese version remains blocked.

As the topic is not discussed in schools, there is an entire generation growing up in China that has no way of learning about the protests except from their parents, many of whom choose not to discuss it.

Many of the protesters, especially the student leaders, were prosecuted, jailed and even executed.

“We were sent away from the city, into the rural areas, to get some perspective,” a woman at Peking University who had participated in the protests said. She wished to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Eventually, students were allowed to return to their colleges and continue their studies. In effect, the movement died quickly.

“We realized that the time was not right, for the movement,” the woman said. “In the rural areas, no one knew what had happened in Beijing. The country was too wide, too divided, for such a movement to be successful.”

Today: a different kind of red
The families of the victims have been trying to get the government to admit fault and allow an official commemoration of the protests.

The participants have largely gone on to integrate themselves into mainstream Chinese society, some even pioneering China’s economic reforms.

Many still support democracy but are less aggressive in its pursuit. They see economic reform as a gateway to a possible but distant realization of democracy in China.

In Hong Kong, 13 students are participating in a hunger strike to commemorate the Tiananmen protests.

Today, the square that witnessed one of the bloodiest protests in the history of student rebellions is draped in a different kind of red.

There are red flags along the central pillar of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, and guards in red and green monitor the square from all sides. To enter the square, visitors pass through a security check.

Tiananmen – literally translated “Gate of Heavenly Peace” – hasn’t seen conflict since 1989.

The square is open to the public, but 20 years after it drew the world’s attention, many question whether it has truly been returned to the people.