Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the Chinese Tiananmen Square protests, when, on June 3-4, 1989, students followed by peasants and factory workers filled the square demanding a more democratic government.
Tanks and soldiers came and the brutal repression of the people was re-established amid gun fire and tear gas.
The world watched and did – nothing.
Not much has changed since then; the Chinese government continues its brutal inhumane acts against its own people and, on this anniversary of what the Chinese government claims was a nonevent, Tiananmen Square was closed to any who wished to mark the date by holding vigil where they lost loved ones.
"We've been under 24-hour surveillance for a week and aren't able to leave home to mourn. It's totally inhuman," said Xu Jue, whose son was 22 when he was shot in the chest by soldiers and bled to death on June 4, 1989.
Tanks and soldiers came and the brutal repression of the people was re-established amid gun fire and tear gas.
The world watched and did – nothing.
Not much has changed since then; the Chinese government continues its brutal inhumane acts against its own people and, on this anniversary of what the Chinese government claims was a nonevent, Tiananmen Square was closed to any who wished to mark the date by holding vigil where they lost loved ones.
"We've been under 24-hour surveillance for a week and aren't able to leave home to mourn. It's totally inhuman," said Xu Jue, whose son was 22 when he was shot in the chest by soldiers and bled to death on June 4, 1989.
While China tries to black out any images that point to dissent amongst the people, tens of thousands of people showed up for a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park.
Other world governments have asked China to acknowledge the events and examine their role in human rights abuses, but an unapologetic Chinese government continues to insist the world should mind its own business.
And so I hope everyone will pause for a moment to consider the plight of the Chinese people as well as other people all over the world suffering and dying for their desire to have peace and dignity and freedom.
Other world governments have asked China to acknowledge the events and examine their role in human rights abuses, but an unapologetic Chinese government continues to insist the world should mind its own business.
And so I hope everyone will pause for a moment to consider the plight of the Chinese people as well as other people all over the world suffering and dying for their desire to have peace and dignity and freedom.
In the words of Jacob Marley's ghost, "Mankind is our business!"
The Dalai Lama urged China's leaders to review the events that led to the bloodshed. The sad irony: The world should investigate China's genocide of the Tibetan people and the systematic destruction of its ancient culture. But that won't happen. The U.S. owes China too much money and can't afford to make a principled stink.
ReplyDeleteSigh - and so it is. People are crushed, their spirits tried beyond endurance and their voices cry out into the universe and echo throughout the planet and still no one comes to their aid...
ReplyDeleteExcept that they're not. Most people in China are too young to remember and those that do seem rather pleased with the way their lives are going which is far far better than things were 20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteIt's very easy to find all kinds of discontented people - millions actually, but there are 1,300,000,000 in that huge place making it painfully impossible to use phrases like "the Chinese" with any degree of meaning.
It just occurred to me that you're suggesting that we go to war with China to rescue it's discontented minorities.
ReplyDeleteBeyond the physical impossibility, where do we get that moral authority?
No Fogg, I am not advocating going to war with China or anyone else. And while I am aware that young people in China today are quite happy making money off the American Consumer Machine, that was NOT the case in 1989.
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me is our country's total lack of response. No embargos, no trade restrictions, no solidarity with those seeking freedom to live. What we did was increase trade, etc and ignore the supression and abuse of the protesters.
Perhaps a more solid stand at the time would have made some kind of difference.
Emotionally, I wanted to see blood. We have relatives that were there at the time, you know, but all in all, it would have been just another case of Elmer Fudd yelling about rascally rabbits and not being able to do anything, just as we couldn't do a damned thing in 1956 about Russia's crackdown on Checkoslovakia.
ReplyDeleteThey are paranoid about foreign intervention to a degree hard to understand and to a country that has lost perhaps a hundred million people during that horrible century, this was minor.
Actually I think that their progress from those days is more than we think it is and is largely due to our not having acted. As with the Soviet bloc, a growing middle class and growing affluence had a greater effect and by trading with them we let them find their own way toward freedom.
You may be correct that a burgeoning middle class will do more to reform China's political system than any embargos will, but it still rankles that they got a free pass.
ReplyDeleteRockync: " No embargos, no trade restrictions, no solidarity with those seeking freedom ..."
ReplyDeleteBut we do have Walmart and Target and hundreds of other merchandisers selling goods made in the People's Republic, but what we don't have are informed consumers willing to make a statement with their dollars. Yes, a grassroots boycott would certainly send a message louder than words ... but why bother! Most consumers would rather save a buck on baubles than spend a buck on human rights.
A minor footnote: After her second deployment in Iraq, my daughter told me that mortar fragments fired at our forces bore inscriptions of Chinese origin. Whether the origin meant Taiwan or the People's Republic is an open question. Regardless, I stopped shopping at Walmart after learning of this.
China is a big time arms dealer, but so is the US, so is Israel. I don't know whether there are any figures concerning which arms dealing nations have armed the most tyrants, aggressors, insurgents and monsters, but it would be interesting and surely not flattering to any of the above. We've certainly supported obscene governments with military equipment.
ReplyDeleteNothing makes me respect China's central government less than the clips I've seen of the stupid thugs they hire to get in the way of foreign reporters. Not that we have exactly set a great example of civility and maturity in the last decade or so, but ....
ReplyDeleteIt's been my experience that the man on the street is so deeply patriotic, or at least defensive of his country that they too would rather not have foreign reporters interpreting China for the world. The humiliation of being criticized, much less embargoed would make us into "foreign devils" all over again.
ReplyDeleteAs bad as it might be, it's far better there than it was and so much better than it was during the Cultural Revolution that the incident, a lifetime ago for most Chinese, seems barely significant.
We once took a chairlift up to a Buddhist temple outside Beijing. I was told that during the 60's it was a virtual assembly line of suicide. That sort of thing doesn't go on any more. An older friend of ours, a chemist, told us stories of a decade of imprisonment
for having studied in the US. A cousin told us of being exiled to live with a nomadic tribe of Mongols in the desert - for no particular reason at all other than that she didn't come from a peasant family. Now they drive new cars and have air conditioning and refrigerators and big screen TV's and dress better than Americans. They're optimistic about the future, we're waiting for the end of the world.
To a villager trying to support a family on $250 a year, such nice things as a free press and the right to assemble and protest seem vastly less desirable than having one's daughter working in a sweat shop and sending money home. Poverty seems to make other people's problems uninteresting.
In day to day life, one walks around the capitol without the feeling of being watched and controlled and in my opinion the atmosphere is so much friendlier than in any US city - for those who go about their business and don't make waves. I recall the afternoon my wife ran her bicycle into a traffic cop and knocked him down -- he laughed it off. Don't try this in New York or Chicago.
Fogg, you know, so many countries in the world over the ages have sought to control the people by brute force and abject terror.
ReplyDeleteIn so many places, the reign of terror continues.
That old adage, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" has unfortunately been proven to be quite accurate.
That the citizens of China can afford some luxuries and perhaps some of the darker aspects of communism have been shelved, I can't help but wonder what will happen there if the US continues in decline and the demand for goods being exported from China drop drastically.
I think what I want to bring to consciousness about the Tiananmen Square incident is how humans, chafing at the yoke of repression, can be swallowed up with barely a burp.
I don't want to forget that everywhere in this world there are kindred spirits yearning for peace and freedom.
“Give me your attired, your haute couture,
ReplyDeleteYour huddled masses yearning to go on a shopping spree …”
How does one measure freedom in a country the size of China? Does it mean freedom from mass starvation? Or the freedom to be a nation of self-appointed moralists as we measure freedom by American standards? Not making excuses for oppression, but when I compare the People’s Republic with Myanmar or North Korea or Zimbabwe, the regime seems the lesser of such evils.
As Mr. Spock might say: “Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the decadence of a few” ... but thats just commie speech from an egalitarian cephalopod.
Exactly. I think there's a hierarchy of aspiration and even in a well fed country like ours, most long for safety and security before real freedom. Freedom is almost meaningless to the hungry.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth saying that many people I've talked to in or from Asia see our ideas about freedom as bordering on selfishness.