Det er årsdagen for massakren på Den Himmelske Fredsplads i 1989. Her er links og artikler.
New York Times skriver, hvordan der få dage før massakren blev et holdt hemmeligt møde med 400 af de øverste medlemmer af partiet, og hvordan mange af de deltagere, der kom helskindet ud af det, i dag sidder på topposter i partiet. Læs hele artiklen:
This year is the 24th anniversary of the bloodshed, and the first under a party leadership dominated by officials with such intimate and ambivalent ties to the events of 1989. Many top leaders served their political apprenticeship in the 1980s, when the boundaries between the permissible and the forbidden were not as stark and heavily policed as they are now. Their careers and friendships, and sometimes their viewpoints, overlapped with intellectuals, officials and policy advisers who were jailed or dismissed after the June 4 crackdown.
Few expect China’s new leaders, installed in November, to overturn the official verdict that the protests were a counterrevolutionary rebellion that had to be crushed. But the immersion of today’s leaders in the political experimentation of the 1980s raises the question of whether they will be more open to new ideas and discussion than their immediate predecessors in high office.
…Yet the lessons of June 4 and its repressive aftermath may weigh on the new leaders, especially if they are confronted by another political uprising, said Wu Wei, a former aide to Zhao Ziyang, the reform-minded party leader ousted shortly before the crackdown.
“For those in power now, it’s still a heavy political burden, even if it’s one that they can never openly discuss,” Mr. Wu said. “Now the people who took part in that time are middle-aged or older, and it’s still a knot in their hearts.”
Washington Posts dygtige Kinakorrespondent William Wan skriver om, hvad dem der var med under rolighederne, fortæller til deres børn i dag:
From a young age, Qi Zhiyong’s daughter asked him how he lost his leg.
To everyone else in the world, Qi always responded to the question with an unflinching, often angry, answer: He lost his left leg when soldiers fired on him and other unarmed civilians during protests at Tiananmen Square in one of modern history’s most brutal crackdowns.
But when his daughter asked, Qi choked back the words.
“I lost it in an accident,” he mumbled for years.
The lie, however, burned at him, he said.
In the 21 / 2 decades since the protests’ violent end, China’s government has largely scrubbed Tiananmen from history. Bullet holes on the streets of Beijing have long been patched over. The government has barred any independent inquiry and censored all mention online. Instead, Tiananmen Square has been reduced to a single euphemistic sentence in most school textbooks, making vague reference to “political turbulence in 1989.”
But for those who were part of the student-led protests against government repression and corruption, those dark morning hours of June 4, 1989, remain etched in memory and, in cases like Qi’s, on their bodies. That generation must now decide what to tell their children about that day, if anything at all.
Tea Leaf Nation har fin oversættelse af nogle af de kommentarer, der flyder rundt på internettet, og forbi censuren:
Chen Baocheng (journalist):
The children born on that year, that month and that day, will have their 25th birthday soon.
A Ding (writer):
I’m going to sleep. Good night, Liubukou. Good night, Muxidi. Good night, Changanjie. [References to Beijing areas affected by June 4 incident]
Jia Zhangke (film director):
Don’t worry about forgetfulness. At least the Sina censors remember.
Blocked by Weibo har en mere teknisk og detaljeret beskrivelse af, hvordan de kinesiske censorer arbejder på at blokere for 6-4:
Another way the social media site Sina Weibo censors its site—alongside manual deletions by human censors of sensitive content—is by blocking the user from searching for specific keywords, and instead returning a message that says no results can be displayed. Though the blocking of keywords is a blunt tactic that often cuts off access to many legitimate posts—in addition to sometimes being ineffective as users switch to homophones or other code words—it is still widely employed on the site. Below are seventy-one keywords (along with brief translations and notes) that are currently blocked from searching on Sina Weibo.
Beijing Cream opfordrer folk til at se eller gense dokumentaren The Gate of Heavenly Peace, der handler om demonstrationerne:
If you haven’t already, watch The Gate of Heavenly Peace, directed by Richard Gordon and Carma Hinton, with writing by Geremie Barmé and John Crowley. The three-hour documentary was released in 1995 to rave reviews — “the atmosphere of the Beijing Spring is conveyed beautifully in all its pathos, drama, hope, craziness, poetry, and violence,” wrote Ian Buruma; “a hard-headed critical analysis of a youthful protest movement that failed,” wrote The New York Times – and remains the best film ever made about the June 4 Incident. Instead of glorifying the student leaders or condemning the Communist Party, it explains how a peaceful democracy movement could possibly have resulted in martial law and Chinese troops opening fire on their own citizens, and attempts to sift through propaganda to produce a chronicle — within the context of Chinese, not Western, history – that might stand the test of time. Absolutely moving, riveting, and powerful beyond words.
Radio Beijing lavede et radioindslag mens det foregik på Tiananmen, og det kan du lytte til på Soundcloud:
Recording of a broadcast made by Radio Beijing on June 3, 1989 during the Tiananmen Square protests. Recorded by G. Jack Urso, the voice you hear is that of Yuan Neng who was later sacked for making the broadcast.
