The Tiananmen Square Massacre Of June 4, 1989—The Ongoing Supression Of Freedom In China
In Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, the Chinese government massacred a large number of their own people who were protesting for greater political freedom.
The Chinese people do not yet have political freedom. Human rights abuses go in China each day. The current government of China contains many of the same officials who held positions of power in 1989. Today’s Chinese government is the continuation of the government that ordered the Tiananmen attack.
From the report—
Growing numbers of human rights activists were imprisoned, put under house arrest or surveillance, or harassed. Repression of minority groups, including Tibetans, Uighursand Mongolians, continued. FalunGongpractitioners were at particularly high risk of torture and other ill-treatment in detention. Christians were persecuted for practising their religion outside state-sanctioned channels. Despite the reinstatement of Supreme People’s Court review of deathpenaltycases, the death penalty remained shrouded in secrecy and continued to be used extensively. Torture of detainees and prisoners remained prevalent. Millions of people had no access to justice and were forced to seek redress through an ineffective extra-legal petition system. Women and girls continued to suffer violence and discrimination. Preparations for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing were marked by repression of human rights activists. Censorship of the internet and other media intensified.”
(Above–Chinese characters meaning freedom.)
President Barack Obama does not seem view China’s human rights record as an important concern in U.S.-China relations.
The following is from a column in the New York Times written about Tiananmen by a Chinese writer named Yu Hua who was there in 1989—
THIS is the first time I am writing about Tiananmen Square. I am telling my story now because 20 years later — the anniversary is June 4 — two facts have become more apparent. The first is that the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests amounted to a one-time release of the Chinese people’s political passions, later replaced by a zeal for making money. The second is that after the summer of 1989 the incident vanished from the Chinese news media. As a result, few young Chinese know anything about it.But most important of all, I realize now that the spring of 1989 was the only time I fully understood the words “the people.” Those words have little meaning in China today. “The people,” or renmin, is one of the first phrases I learned to read and write. I knew our country was called “the People’s Republic of China.” Chairman Mao told us to “serve the people.” The most important paper was People’s Daily. “Since 1949, the people are the masters,” we learned to say…. In China today, it seems only officials have “the people” on their lips. New vocabulary has sprouted up — netizens, stock traders, fund holders, celebrity fans, migrant laborers and so on — slicing into smaller pieces the already faded concept of “the people… But in 1989, my 30th year, those words were not just an empty phrase. Protests were spreading across the country, and in Beijing, where I was studying, the police suddenly disappeared from the streets. You could take the subway or a bus without paying, and everyone was smiling at one another. Hard-nosed street vendors handed out free refreshments to protesters. Retirees donated their meager savings to the hunger strikers in the square. As a show of support for the students, pickpockets called a moratorium….”
( Below—Bodies of people killed by Chinese government at Tiananmen Square.)
China is a nation where over a billion people don’t have basic political freedom and human rights. This denial of basic rights was maintained by the murder of Chinese citizens by the Chinese government.
These facts are the defining facts of modern China.