Tank Man, the unknown protestor

An unknown Beijing citizen who would come to be known as “Tank Man” stands in front of tanks on the Avenue of Eternal Peace on June 5, 1989, as military clashed with protesters in Tiananmen Square.

NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENED IN TIANANMEN SQUARE.  

Chen Guang (陳光)

Chen Guang, a Beijing painter, was a soldier in Tiananmen in 1989. He has created a series of works based on his photographs of the June Fourth Incident. Chen Guang was arrested after staging a performance art piece commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident earlier this month.

6/4/1989- Chinese Army Troops Storm Tiananmen Square To Crush The Pro-Democracy Movement. 

Almost to the end, the students thought they could win. As troops closed in on Tiananmen Square before dawn on Sunday, the unarmed protesters defiantly stood their ground.  But two hours later, as gunfire echoed outside the square, the last holdouts gave in to despair. “We can’t let any more blood flow,” someone shouted over the loudspeaker. “We must leave.” The last 1,000 or so students wearily walked out of the square, many of them in tears. At that point the Army stormed down the streets toward Tiananmen — tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks full of troops, spitting gunfire in all directions. They smashed through the protesters’ frail barricades and charged into the square, where they demolished the students’ provocative statue, “the Goddess of Democracy.” Angry civilians poured into the streets shouting “You beasts! You beasts!” The soldiers shot back, killing 500 to 1,000 people and leaving the democracy movement in ruins.

A Flag in June

The events of 4 June 1989 continue to generate new crimes – the crime of remembering, and the crime of forgetting.

New Statesman - Isabel Hilton - June 4th

In the past few weeks, more than 20 apparently unconnected individuals have been detained in China. They include lawyers, gay rights activists, ordinary citizens, journalists and one ex-soldier-turned-performance artist and the tally is still rising. What all these people have in common is that they have committed a crime in the eyes of the Communist Party of China (CPC): each one was suspected of planning to mark the events of 4 June 1989, when Deng Xiaoping sent tanks and more than 200,000 soldiers to crush unarmed citizens in Tiananmen Square, the hallowed central space of China’s capital city, unleashing what became a nationwide act of revenge against all who had challenged the state.

Since the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Tiananmen, the “Gate of Heavenly Peace” and the southernmost gate into the Imperial City, had been the site of inter­action between the emperors, hidden deep within the Forbidden City, and the Chinese people. Here, people could gather to hear the reading of decrees issued by the emperor. The emperor himself would emerge periodically through the gate to perform his duties, as the son of heaven, at the various temples that surrounded the Imperial City.

In those times, the view south from Tiananmen was of a processional avenue leading to a further series of gates, but when the Communist Party took over China in 1949 they cleared this to create one of the world’s largest public squares, said to be capable of accommodating ten million people, a space that would become a vast stage for political theatre. For China’s rulers, this was where the power of the state would be displayed in military and political parades on ritual occasions such as the annual National Day on 1 October or at Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution rallies by Red Guards.

But create a political stage, and there is the risk that it can be occupied by other actors. In 1976 people gathered in the square to pay tribute to the recently deceased premier, Zhou Enlai, and to support Deng Xiaoping, then embattled against the Gang of Four, led by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing. It happened again in 1986 with student protests and, most notoriously, it happened in 1989, at the end of the most liberal decade the People’s Republic had enjoyed, when students from Beijing’s most prestigious universities congregated to mourn the death on 15 April that year of the reforming party general secretary Hu Yaobang, a man who had spent his final years under virtual house arrest.

The students’ script was radically different from that of the state: they talked of official corruption and pleaded for the Chinese constitution to be enacted, with its guarantees of rule of law and freedom of speech. They wanted democratic accountability, if not democracy itself. Thousands of citizens came out to support them and demonstrations spread across the capital and the country as workers, journalists and sympathisers rallied. The subsequent military crackdown killed and injured many (the numbers are unknown) and generated one of the world’s most potent images: that of a young man carrying shopping bags and standing his ground, fragile and unarmed, in front of a column of tanks, bringing the might of the state to a halt for a few, unforgettable moments. Beyond Tiananmen, even worse violence took place in the western suburbs of Beijing, where hundreds of workers were reportedly gunned down in the streets.

Today, the events of 4 June 1989 continue to generate new crimes – the crime of remembering, which is prosecuted as fiercely as ever, and the crime of forgetting, an ethical and historical crime that has been imposed on the generations that have grown up in the China created by those events.

Tiananmen Square 1989 – in pictures : 

On this day 25 years ago, the Chinese Communist party sent 200,000 soldiers to suppress a peaceful student-led demonstration calling for political reform. The move caused numerous casualties among the demonstrators, led to a crackdown on other protests and placed strict restrictions on the media.

Pro-democracy protesters went to Tiananmen Square in Beijing to take part in the funeral ceremony of former Chinese Communist party general secretary Hu Yaobang, who was also a liberal reformer. Some six weeks later, protesters still occupied the square when the military was mobilised. Estimates of the resulting fatalities range from a few hundred into the thousands, and the democracy movement was crushed.

In the aftermath, foreign journalists were expelled, media coverage of the events became strictly controlled and the government conducted widespread arrests. In response, western governments imposed economic sanctions.

Many people, both in China and globally, argue that the Chinese government continues to use force in order to remain in power and restrict human rights. Over the last few days, Google has been largely inaccessible to Chinese citizens in what is thought to be an act of censorship.

According to Amnesty International, Chinese authorities have attempted to suppress those seeking to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the event and detained at least 66 people in connection with it.

William Nee, China researcher at the organisation, said, “The past few days have seen the Chinese authorities ratchet up the repression. They appear willing to stop at nothing in their attempts to prevent people from marking the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. They have gone further when compared to previous years.”

The government’s actions in regards to the anniversary raise one important question – in 25 years, has China progressed in terms of democracy?

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