May 35

[Randy W]

An ongoing topic - click here for Most Recent Post

 

. . . is code for June 4 on the Weibos here in China

 

Tales of Army Discord Show Tiananmen Square in a New Light

 

 

Even after a quarter-century, the night of bloodshed remains one of the most delicate subjects in Chinese politics, subjected to unrelenting attempts by the authorities to essentially erase it from history. Yet even now, new information is emerging that modifies the accepted understanding of that divisive event.

 

At the time, Deng Xiaoping, the party patriarch who presided over the crackdown, praised the military for its unflinching loyalty, and the image of a ruthlessly obedient army lingers even in some foreign accounts. But the military speeches and reports composed before June 4 that year, and in the months after, show soldiers troubled by misgivings, confusion, rumors and regrets about the task assigned to them.

 

“The situation was fluid and confusing, and we underestimated the brutality of the struggle,” Capt. Yang De’an, an officer with the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force, wrote in one assessment found among military documents acquired by the Princeton University Library. “It was hard to distinguish foes from friends, and the target to be attacked was unclear.”

 

Some former soldiers and officials who agreed to talk about their roles in the crisis said they were alarmed by the state-enforced censorship and silencing of witnesses that have left a younger generation largely ignorant about one of the most devastating episodes in modern Chinese history.

 

. . .

 

Mr. Li said he was spared the decision of whether to fire by his divisional commander, Xu Feng, who ignored instructions to plow toward Tiananmen. Instead, after learning of the unfolding bloodshed, Commander Xu kept his troops in the eastern suburbs, where the turmoil was less intense, and pretended his battalion’s communication radio had malfunctioned. Mr. Li can still recall the frantic calls: “Division 116, Division 116, where are you?”

[warpedbored]

It would be difficult to fire on your own citizens. Kent State comes to mind. "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming...."

[Randy W]

New York Times coverage from 25 years ago

 

‘It Will Be Incomparably More Difficult to Rule China’

Given the aggressive efforts by Chinese censors and security forces, and the sensitivity of government officials ahead of this week’s anniversary, this assessment has been borne out.

 

. . .

 

“Looking back at what I wrote 25 years ago, I’d say the tone was right but the timing way too optimistic,” Mr. Kristof said recently in an email. “The Communist party indeed has diminishing control over people’s lives.” But he noted that despite economic and social pluralism, there is “still not a whisker of political pluralism.”

 

[Randy W]

The tank man - from another angle, From the New York Times in 2009

 

Behind the Scenes: A New Angle on History

 

Mr. Jones’s angle on the historic encounter is vastly different from four other versions shot that day, taken at eye level moments before the tanks stopped at the feet of the lone protester. Wildly chaotic, a man ducks in the foreground, reacting from gunfire coming from the tanks. Another flashes a near-smile. Another pedals his bike, seemingly passive as the tanks rumble towards confrontation.

 

The photograph encourages the viewer to reevaluate the famous encounter. Unlike the other four versions, we are given a sense of what it was like on the ground as the tanks heaved forward, the man’s act of defiance escalated by the flight of others.

 

Edited June 5, 2014 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Allon]

The General Secretary at the time who tried to convince the crowds to leave was Zhau Ziyang. He was quietly relieved of his position, although never formally.

 

His book, A Prisoner of the State, was composed of recordings he made surreptitiously in his study before he died at 85.

 

In that book, he describes how Deng moved commanders around because of the close bond that had been formed between them and the army. He felt the units that came from Shenyang in northern China spoke Mandarin as did most of the crowd in Beijing. So he brought in troops from hard core units from around Shanghai and east that had fighting history going back to the civil war. They spoke a different dialect, even language.

 

Jan Wong's book, Red China Blues, is also a chilling tale of her experience at the hotel in Beijing where the famous picture was taken. The roll of film that had the series of pictures of the Tank Man were hidden in a toilet tank to prevent the security teams that came later from confiscating the roll. The cameraman gave them an empty roll.

 

Any addition to what happened that day and before should be published. Good find, Randy.

[Mick]

One of my former students, who lives in Bejing, manages to get on Facebook each day. Today he posted this image with the caption reading: "Memory replacement completed."

 

Edited June 5, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

This article was posted on the NY Times web site on the 4th

 

64 Tiananmen-Related Words China Is Blocking Online Today

 

a sampling

 

 

• ⅥⅣ: Roman numerals for 6-4
• IIXVIIIIX: Roman numbers for 1-9-8-9
• Jun 4th
• 陆肆: an alternative way to write 6-4
• 天安門: Tiananmen (traditional characters)
• 五月三十五: May 35, aka June 4
• 瓶反鹿死: a homophone for ‘redress June 4th’
• six四: 6-4
• six four
• TAM: abbreviation for Tiananmen
• 王维林: Wang Weilin, alleged “tank man”
• 春夏之交: Between spring and summer

 

[Randy W]

SCMP said:

Gary Cheung is the Post’s political editor

Remembering June 4 dead has a place in Hong Kong’s fight for democracy

Gary Cheung says while understandable, Hong Kong students’ desire to dissociate themselves from the drive for national progress is illogical

 

 

Quote

In his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Czech writer Milan Kundera wrote that “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. Since the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on pro-democracy protesters on June 4, 1989, Beijing has used all methods to stop mainlanders from mentioning the tragic event in the public domain while frowning on the activities in Hong Kong to commemorate the incident.

At a private meeting with veteran pro-democracy activist Szeto Wah in 1997, then chief executive Tung Chee-hwa asked the then chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movements of China to drop the “June 4 baggage”. Tung told Szeto the following year not to organise events to commemorate the crackdown. Tung’s efforts were in vain: the turnout for the annual candlelight vigil in Victoria Park reached a record of more than 180,000 in 2014, according to the organisers.

What Tung failed to achieve is now being delivered by the city’s student leaders.

. . .

HKU student union president Althea Suen Hiu-nam argued last week that a line should be drawn under mourning those killed in 1989 as the commemorative activities had made no headway. She said the alliance’s slogan of “building a democratic China” was a “utopian goal” that was impossible to achieve, and wasting efforts on it would only impede Hong Kong’s democratic development.

Student leaders’ rejection of the goal of “building a democratic China” can be attributed to their frustration with the mainland authorities in the wake of the Occupy protests. They are trying to grapple with the localist movement while rejecting the Hong Kong-mainland bond. This sense of alienation from the mainland is prevalent among a substantial number of young people here.

Edited June 5, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Sea of candles in Hong Kong at June 4 vigil despite boycott calls


Organisers say 125,000 people took part in the Victoria Park event, while another 2,500 attended alternative events at two university campuses

 

 

 

Edited June 5, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

in the SCMP

 

China set to free ‘last Tiananmen prisoner’ – but he’ll be frail and ill, rights group says

But Miao Deshun, jailed for life at 24, is said to be suffering hepatitis B and schizophrenia

 

Miao, then 24, received a suspended death sentence for arson after he was convicted of throwing a basket at a burning tank with other four workers during the protest. His sentence was commuted to life in jail in 1991 and reduced several times afterwards.

 

. . .

 

Miao had never admitted his wrongdoings in the protest, the foundation said at the time, quoting a former inmate.

Dui Hua also said Miao ­suffered from hepatitis B and schizophrenia.

Miao is widely seen as the last person to remain behind bars for his involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

 

. . .

 

Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of state-run Global Times, previously wrote in a commentary about Miao that “the life of anyone who bet on the wrong side of history weighs less than a feather”.

 

[Allon]

Sadly, I have read some later accounts that Wang Weilin, the Tank Man, was executed a few days after the incident. Other earlier accounts, including one from Jan Wong, say he is still alive but that was years ago, and really more her opinion than fact.

 

The accounts say the guys who came to retrieve Wang were security agents.

[Randy W]

In the NY Times

 

Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But unlike most others on the square, Mr. Chen came with a camera, a luxury in China back then. An uncle from Taiwan had given him a Japanese-made Yashica, and before leaving for Beijing, Mr. Chen bought four rolls of film. He took photographs around the square and at other protest sites until his film ran out a week into his 10-day stay.

 

 

 

 

 

. . . and from the SCMP

 

The other photographers who snapped Tiananmen’s Tank Man, and their memories of June 4, 1989 in Beijing

AP’s photo is most famous, but other photographers shot scene that became a defining symbol of the 1989 crackdown on protesters in Beijing. We talk to two, Reuters’ Arthur Tsang, from Hong Kong, and Magnum’s Stuart Franklin

[Randy W]

in the SCMP

 

Time to commemorate Tiananmen crackdown has come to an end, student union says

Chinese University of Hong Kong student union issues statement that prompts fierce condemnation from supporters of the annual June 4 vigil

The student union of Chinese University issued the statement hours before thousands of Hongkongers gathered to mark the anniversary of the bloody crackdown by attending the ­annual candlelight vigil last night in Victoria Park.

 

. . .

 

While Hong Kong is the only place on Chinese soil where large-scale commemorative events can still be held, support for such ­activities has waned in recent years amid the rise of localism in the city. Student unions from all the city’s universities said they would boycott the vigil on Sunday for the second year in a row.

 

[Randy W]

Hong Kong activists fight to keep memory of Tiananmen Square crackdown alive

 

South China Morning Post

Published on May 31, 2018

On June 4, 1989, the Chinese government sent in troops to crush a weeks-long protest at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Protesters were calling for democracy, greater accountability and more freedoms. The government’s response shocked the world. Hong Kong activists and members of the public have held events to remember the crackdown every year since, but recently there has been increasing pressure not to do so. Twenty-nine years on, a survivor of the crackdown and a long-time activist talk about why they think it’s important that Hongkongers and the world do not forget what happened

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Randy W]

from the SCMP

 

24 hours in Hong Kong: the dramatic untold story of trio’s escape after the Tiananmen Square crackdown

 

On the 29th anniversary of China’s bloody response to student protests, one man breaks his decades-long silence on helping two leaders to escape, and why he doesn’t regret leaving his life and family behind forever

 

 

 

 

Quote

It is a story that has never been told before, until now.

 

. . .

 

“Ah Hung is truly an unsung hero,” Chu said. “We always knew there were three people fleeing to France together, but we never realised who the third person was … it is a story that’s never been told.”

 

The escape route through Hong Kong became a well-travelled one. An underground movement led by Hongkongers and code-named Operation Yellow Bird spirited 130 dissidents out of the clutches of the Chinese government through the city to new lives overseas after the crackdown.

 

. . .

 

“The underground route would have not worked had France not opened its doors [to receive the fleeing dissidents] first,” he said. “The Hong Kong government could only turn a blind eye to the activists in the city if it was made clear they would be received by other countries.”

 

 

Edited June 5, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)