Petrified Truth

Red harvest

Today is the 15th anniversary of China's bloody repression in Tiananmen Square of a nascent democracy movement. This autocratic regime hasn't changed much since then, as noted yesterday.

Fifteen years after the military opened fire on Chinese citizens, killing hundreds and putting an end to months of pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, China's image has rebounded from international pariah to global economic force.

Yet the bloody crackdown that began late in the evening of June 3, 1989, and continued into the next morning hangs heavily over China's ruling Communist Party. The event is still so sensitive, and authorities still so fearful of allowing citizens the slightest bit of space for memorializing it, that they have rounded up scholars and activists in the last week and put them under house arrest or taken them out of Beijing. Public discussion of the incident is taboo.

Today, events provided further confirmation.

Chinese police kept Tiananmen Square free of demonstrators Friday, detaining at least 16 people while activists abroad marked the 15th anniversary of the deadly military attack on pro-democracy protesters and pressed their demands for political change.

Since the June 4, 1989, military assault that killed hundreds, and possibly thousands, of demonstrators, communist leaders have made many changes demanded by the dissidents, including scrapping rules dictating where Chinese could work and whom they could marry. A decade of stunning economic growth has given millions of people new choices in life

But the closed, secretive ruling party that crushed the protests still permits no independent political activity and has jailed or driven into exile most of China's active dissidents.

Reporters saw 16 middle-aged men and women picked up Friday on the square in small groups and dragged to waiting police vans. It was not clear whether the detentions were related to the anniversary, but security forces had been trying to block public commemorations for people killed in the military crackdown.

The square was open to the public and hundreds of tourists with their children strolled under a light sprinkling of rain.

Though extra guards were on duty, security was relatively light compared with other politically sensitive dates. Troops from the paramilitary People's Armed Police dozed aboard two parked buses. Security agents in civilian clothes moved among the crowds.

An Associated Press photographer was briefly detained after photographing detentions on the square, and Chinese tourists who snapped pictures were forced by police to delete them from digital cameras.

In advance of the anniversary, Chinese authorities detained activists and relatives of people killed in 1989 or ordered them out of Beijing.

On Friday, broadcasts of CNN to hotels and apartment compounds for foreigners in the Chinese capital were blacked out repeatedly when the network showed reports on the crackdown.

A shroud of mystery still hangs over a key symbolic figure from that bitter day 15 years ago.

For many foreigners, he is Tiananmen Square's most recognizable figure, outshining even Chairman Mao Tse-tung himself -- whose body still lies in state at a far end of the vast public space.

Just after noon on June 5, 1989, the day after Chinese troops stormed the square to brutally crush a student political uprising here, a solitary protester engaged in a modern-day David vs. Goliath showdown: Clutching nothing but two shopping bags, he stood his ground before a column of oncoming tanks along the adjacent Avenue of Eternal Peace.

Captured by newspaper photographs and cable news footage, the tense standoff lasted several minutes, a seeming eternity to onlookers waiting for the tanks to overrun the man, before he was hustled from the scene by onlookers.

On the 15th anniversary of the government crackdown in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed, this lone dissenter's story remains the most enduring mystery of the violent confrontation.

Even today, no one knows whether he's dead or alive. Chinese activists and government officials say they aren't even sure of his name. After suddenly emerging to symbolize for the world the fierce power of the individual spirit in the face of martial rule, he vanished.

"For me, he represents the unknown soldier of the Chinese democratic revolution," said John Kamm, executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco-based human rights group. "What's so strange is that his act of bravery was conducted in plain view of the world. But other than seeing his act, we know so very little about him."

The news footage and photographs only showed him from the back.In 1999, on the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin was asked what had happened to the mystery man. He responded in English: "I think never killed." Jiang said government officials conducted their own search for the protester, checking morgues, prisons and computer registers, but could not find him.

But they could get no help from Chinese citizens themselves: No one in the country has ever seen the images. In fact, no ordinary Chinese beyond the protesters and soldiers involved even knows of the standoff. Even today, Chinese can't see the famous photograph, even on the Internet. Attempts to download the picture are blocked by the government.

Some believe the man endured months, or years, of political re-education. Others say he was hunted down and executed.

Remember him and all the others in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan who hunger only for freedom.

Posted by Alan at June 4, 2004 08:31 PM