nick’s (n)-line life

The 4th July marks the anniversary of the Tiananmen incident. 16 years ago shocking images from Communist China rocked the world. Students ringleaders stood up to the government, demanding democracy and basic rights and freedoms. The results were nothing short of devastating. Thousands of student protestors and bystanders were killed. Famously, Zhao Ziyang was imprisoned for showing sympathy with the students (until his recent death in 2005) and the surrounding controversy rocked the world. The image of a lone figure standing up to Chinese tanks remains the definitive reminder of 1989.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia


My Beijing gallery includes some photos of the square.

Timeline - 1989 [from BBC pages]
15 April: Reformist leader Hu Yaobang dies
22 April: Hu’s memorial service. Thousands call for faster reforms
13 May: Students begin hunger strike as power struggle grips Communist Party
15 May: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visits China
19 May: Zhao makes tearful appeal to students in Tiananmen Square to leave
20 May: Martial law declared in Beijing
3-4 June: Security forces clear the square, killing hundreds

The government’s response to all of this?

“No protesters were killed in Tiananmen square”

Eye witness reports indicate that this may technically be true but it’s about as massivly misleading as it could possibly be as all of the deaths occured in the streets surrounding the square. An estimated 4 - 6,000 people were killed and another 30,000 injured.

The BBC is running a very extensive commentary to commemorate the 16th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident. I have included a number of its most interesting articles and a few from a few other sites:
Descriptive account of the incident on the 15th Anniversary
Original BBC Commentary in 1989 [Video]
Tiananmen in Wikipedia

The Definitive Tiananmen Links Page

Tiananmen Vigil in Hong Kong [Video]
Commentary on Hong Kong and Macau

Perhaps Hong Kong’s Vigil tells us more about political undertones in modern China than anything else.

Hong Kong is the only place in China where a memorial of this kind has been allowed. Think about that for a few moments. China is huge, really massive, and feelings are very strong on this issue. Other places in China would surely have wanted to run them, mostly obviously in Tiananmen itself. Yet they weren’t allowed. What makes Hong Kong different? Is it the one country two systems? Well, in my opinion: yes and no.

To me it is more what the mere existence of the two systems represent. Hong Kong is not running a capitalist enclave in China because the government thought it was a good idea, it’s doing it because it has no choice. To start with, the British wouldn’t have agreed to handover the former colony without these stipulations (it was only the new territories which had to be handed back) which Chris Patten tried so hard to put in place. More crucially Hong Kong’s population would never have accepted it.

Beijing wasn’t prepared to forcibly stop the memorial in Hong Kong, simply because if it had done it would be risking something akin to a repeat of the Tiananmen incident! People would not have obeyed any ban of decree not to hold the vigil and the Beijing government, power-obsessed as it is, would have been forced to confront such a flagrant breach of it’s authority. In my opinion, Beijing was scared of the consequences of banning a memorial in Hong Kong.

I’ll finish by quoting another of the BBC articles:

“Tiananmen clearly remains very much alive today for the Chinese public and the demands by Chinese citizens for justice continue,” [Amnesty International] the London-based rights group said.

Correspondents say the issue remains very sensitive for the ruling Communist Party and those who witnessed or took part in the events.

Additional link to protest in Hong Kong by International Action