Tiananmen: A battle of remembering vs. forgetting
BEIJING (AP) - As a young poet, Cui Weiping was not much interested in politics. But she says she could never shake the image of her husband returning home on a June night 20 years ago, his pants mottled with the blood of people shot by the Chinese army.
Now Cui is speaking out, trying to rescue the memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement and its violent end from a powerful government heavily invested in suppressing their very mention.
With the approach Thursday of the 20th anniversary of "six-four," Chinese shorthand for the June 4 crackdown date, this Beijing Film Academy professor feels a duty to remember.
"Opening fire was not our responsibility these 20 years. But not talking about six-four has been our responsibility these 20 years," said Cui, a slight, soft-spoken woman with a pixie-ish haircut.
In mid-May, 53-year-old Cui gave a speech on the duty to speak out to small gathering of like-minded liberals. She posted her comments - "Are we intending to continue this silence?" - on her blog. They were excised by censors from the Chinese site but then reposted by others and removed again repeatedly.
Two decades on, the events in the heart of the Chinese capital and elsewhere remain an essential issue for some Chinese even as the authoritarian government has largely succeeded in turning it into a non-issue for many, using stunning economic growth, sophisticated propaganda and repression to stifle public discussion.
The struggle matters because as China becomes economically and diplomatically stronger, its leaders and supporters point to their system as a model, an alternative to the capitalist, democratic West teetering in financial crisis. Gleaming rebuilt cities like Shanghai and the grand, flawless Beijing Olympics are what the Chinese leadership wants to be associated with, not the crackdown. Tiananmen Square has been remodeled too, with patches of grass to make it look less cold and forbidding.
The trouble is, the memories keep percolating. "Eighty-nine is like a dead rat in the Chinese political system. It's getting stinkier by the day," said Anne-Marie Brady, a Chinese politics expert at New Zealand's University of Canterbury. "It has to be dealt with at some point."
The Tiananmen movement rose from a ferment of reform bubbling through China and the Soviet Bloc. When a popular reformist leader died, students in Beijing marched to Tiananmen to demand change, later occupying the square for weeks and drawing in as many as a million people. People from other parts of China joined them, thronging around a makeshift statue of liberty. After hard-liners reasserted themselves, the military assault came, killing hundreds. In one iconic moment of resistance, a lone man holding shopping bags stood in front of a column of tanks.
Though they rarely talk about it, people in their 30s and older in Beijing and elsewhere remember the demonstrations and the months of martial law.
An advertisement circulated on the Internet in March for T-shirts marked with the dates of the crackdown in Roman numerals - VIIIIXVIIV for '89 6-4 - until being expunged. Last July, the plucky Beijing News tabloid ran two pages of photographs of China in the 1980s, one of them of a black-and-white Associated Press image titled "The Wounded" showing young men in bloodstained shirts on the back of a three-wheeled cart. No caption explained the context, but many knew the photo was from the crackdown. The government removed the spread from the Internet and ordered the paper recalled from newsstands.
Stunned by the protests and communism's collapse in Eastern Europe, Beijing opened a multi-front campaign to keep the Communist Party in power. Free market reforms were unleashed, raising living standards. The propaganda departments that supervise all media were reinvigorated. They adapted the flashy techniques of modern Western advertising and Hollywood entertainment and tamed the Internet. A new nationalistic message was peddled: that the party remained a bulwark against a hostile U.S. intent on thwarting China's rise to greatness.
Above all, the leadership set about reforming the party. Its elite think tanks studied the lessons of communism's fall elsewhere. The party opened its doors to entrepreneurs, thus co-opting a potential source of opposition. It restructured and retrained the bureaucracy to make government responsive to people's needs, if not open and democratic. Tax revenues swollen by the expanding economy provided means to buy off redundant factory workers and poor farmers left behind in the boom.
"Any ruling party, no matter how mighty its power, how senior its qualifications, how long its rein, if it's stuck in a rut, standing still and not making progress, conservative and rigid and not thinking about forging ahead, then its creativity will fail and its vital energy stop." Vice President Xi Jinping said reiterating this message to senior officials at the Central Party School last September.
Imposing a silence over Tiananmen and the arrest and harassment of political critics are blunter tools in this strategy. To Cui, the poet, the taboo is a humiliation the leadership uses to make people complicit in preserving the party's political monopoly.
"To allow such a hole to exist in our lives has made our ethics blurry and problematic," she said in addressing the May 10 gathering of academics and activists at a hotel function room in Beijing's Western Hills.
Cui was at home the night of the crackdown; her husband, like many in the city, had stayed on the streets. For years, Cui said, depression clouded her memories of the event. Translating into Chinese the book "Open Letters" by Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright and post-communist president of Czechoslovakia, helped her recover her memories and voice. Her blog, hosted on China's biggest Internet portal, often features pointed social commentary. Government censorship is a frequent target.
Cui believes that the crackdown remains a sore point for many Chinese, including younger Chinese who are supposed to be apolitical. Friends pass around pirated DVDs of "The Gate of Heavenly Peace," a 1995 documentary about the Tiananmen movement. Some bulletin board sites host furtive discussions about what to wear to commemorate the anniversary. Some are suggesting white, the traditional color of mourning.
Online, however, Cui said a different idea has been voiced for what to wear this June 4. "Some say we ought to wear a white shirt and blue trousers just like tank man," Cui said.
- Re: Tiananmen: A battle of remembering vs. forgettingposted on 05/31/2009
May 30th, 2009, Washington DC (photo by .CZ. of CND)
I was there.
- posted on 06/01/2009
那一线怕打架,我就在这一线顶一下吧。这件事最初我是知道的,过
程中也知道一些,咖啡有几个贴子,当然有一个被删,但还是蛮珍惜
的。至少,这件事能与老咖啡们添点边儿。那一线老面贴照,我上网
查也觉得人数稀稀,要是我在DC附近,绝对会去凑个数。
http://www.realcourage.org/2009/05/candlelight-memorial-tiananmen/
但是,又象老面说的,也许纪念的方式不一样。我知道过程中有许多
人纷纷解囊,也许都天各一方。能组织这样一件事就非同凡响,我将
之与老瓦那一回地震捐款一并提。老瓦、废名的诗都了不起!
咱不是偷懒,更不是逃避,确实没经历过,写不充实啊。这个我早就
跟Adagio提过的。
六四那日再容我燃香烧纸钱吧。阿弥陀佛!
- posted on 06/02/2009
世界日报 张育平報道 (06/02/2009)
六四天安門事件即將屆滿20周年,一場「勿忘六四」的燭光紀念會上周末在華盛頓紀念碑前舉行。會中有心靈治療歌手和童聲合唱團以歌聲傳愛,並在牧師帶領下,百餘民眾手持蠟燭共同為六四的死難者默叮谂螝v史悲劇莫再重演。
許多長期關注中國大陸民主發展的海外民呷耸砍鱿诉@場紀念會。在六四事件中為援救一位女學生,不幸被坦克輾過而失去雙腿的方政,獲邀擔任紀念會特別來賓。方政表示,正義終究會戰勝邪惡,看到現場有許多青年學子參加,他感到十分欣慰。
曾是天安門廣場學哳I袖之一、目前在牛津大學擔任訪問學者的王丹,也參加這場紀念會。王丹指出,不了解六四就無法真正了解今日的中國。除了希望大家發揮所有的影響力,讓世人記得這個歷史事件和死難同胞,王丹還呼籲在六四當天所有人身穿白衣,表達對死難者的悼念。
應邀致辭者還包括擔任共產主義受難者紀念基金會主席、也是傳統基金會研究員的艾德華茲(Lee Edwards),他藉著致詞向中國國家主席胡鍧齻鬟_訊息,若希望改善中美關係、奠定兩國間的長期友誼,就應該把六四的真相告訴人民,不再欺瞞。
長期在海外募集資金、為六四受難者家屬提供人道援助的陶業,致詞時提醒世人當年天安門事件遭到血腥鎮壓的殘酷史實,並提及在海外成立的人道救援基金會和六四孤兒基金歷年來所做的努力。
當夜幕低垂,台下的燭光集體點亮,紀念會瀰漫著一股感傷的氣氛。在沉重的音樂聲中,工作人員逐一頌讀上百名六四死難者的名字和年齡,在場民眾手持蠟燭,以沉痛、惋惜和不平的心情,緬懷這些胸懷偉大理想、正值黃金年華的大學生及社會人士。隨後牧師上台帶領所有人,在六四20周年共同為死難者祝丁
從賓州前來參加紀念會的心靈治療歌手玉梅(Demian Yumei)在會中演唱了許多歌曲,她還特別為天安門廣場的學生創作了「留住夢想」(Keep the Dream Alive)這首歌,歌詞中的「留住夢想,深深埋在我的心底,有一天我要看到它的實現,我將留住夢想在我心底」,道出海內外支持中國民主邉尤耸康男穆暋
這場六四20周年音樂暨燭光紀念會發起者是一群熱心的美國網友,他們摒棄不同的政治立場,自發地籌備這場紀念會,其中多數人並未親身經歷六四天安門事件。
一位工作人員表示,在將近一年的籌備期間,網友們在網路上發起樂捐和拍賣來籌集紀念會的資金,大家把自己寫的書、詩集、手稿,甚至皮包拿出來拍賣,最終籌到2萬5000元。許多網友還特地從威斯康辛州、波士頓、紐約、加州等地遠道而來,參加這場深具歷史意義的紀念會。除了音樂會和燭光紀念儀式,當天還設置數個大型活動看板,張貼許多六四民咂陂g的相片及歷史資料,協助民眾了解這個事件的始末。
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