The mother: Ding Zilin
Grief fills the air in the home of Ding Zilin. The clock stopped for her on
June 4, 1989. Her every word breathes bitterness and defiance. It has been
20 years since her 17-year-old son rushed out of the house in a frenzy of
excitement on the evening of June 3, as it became clear that the Chinese
Army would march into Beijing to clear Tiananmen Square. The next time she
saw him was in the morgue at the Beijing Children’s Hospital. He had been
shot in the back, the bullet going through his heart. He was her only child,
born when she was 36 years old.
To try to cope with her sorrow she founded the Tiananmen Mothers group to
discover the identities of those who were killed, and to try to force an
explanation from the Government. “On the 20th anniversary I don’t hold out
any hope that this stubborn leadership will change its stand.” But she
maintains her demands: a true account, a list of the victims and an
independent inquiry.
She prefers not to talk about her son, Jiang Jielian, although pictures fill
her home and his ashes lie in a wooden cabinet, awaiting a final resting
place alongside others who were killed. Her life and that of her ailing
husband revolve around their absent child. Tears well in her eyes as she
mentions him.
The former philosophy professor is too strong to be overwhelmed by her loss.
For three years she has been compiling testimonies by relatives of victims
and by survivors. It is a long and painstaking task. She has a list of 195
victims. The Government has put the death toll in the hundreds, including 14
soldiers. However, she believes that this is far too low.
Many victims’ families prefer to remain anonymous, although some have been
willing to make videos that she has posted on her Tiananmen Mothers website,
banned and blocked by the Great Firewall of China. She has been dribbling
these out over several weeks in advance of the anniversary, but the work has
slowed since police harassment late last year contributed to her husband
suffering a stroke. “We have to do this now because we are growing older and
one day we will not be here.”
She sees signs that the authorities have allowed her greater freedom of
movement. Yet she expects that agents will try to stop her planned
pilgrimage on the night of June 3 to the place where her son was shot . “The
Party is very nervous. But why? From a security point of view we are weak.
We are just a small group who mourn.”
The official: Bao Tong
In a nondescript flats across the road from the military hardware in China’s
army museum, an elderly man lives under round-the-clock surveillance. For
the past 20 years, his life has not been his own. It is unlikely he will
ever again know real freedom.
Bao Tong was the most senior official to be jailed after the demonstrations,
among the most prominent victims of a power struggle raging in the highest
echelons of the Communist Party. Once secretary to the Politburo Standing
Committee — the most powerful decision-making body in China — and a top aide
to the late reformist party chief, Zhao Ziyang (in photo frame, left), Bao
is now a thorn in the side of the authorities.
He affects nonchalance at the constant monitoring. He is unemotional about the
newest petty punishment imposed with the approach of the 20th anniversary:
now, in an unusual humiliation, the 76-year-old must go down to the front
door to receive visitors. The authorities impose stricter controls on
potential troublemakers each year before the sensitive date. But Bao chats
politely with the police as they register details of everyone coming to see
him. This is a far cry from the heady days in the late 1980s when the Party
asked him to plot a path towards political reform — or the introduction of
more checks and balances, and possibly even some form of democracy. That all
ended a few days before June 4, 1989.
He was privy to the innermost workings of the Party. He was present in the
struggle that culminated with the disgrace of his mentor, Zhao. He paid a
high price.
He was at Zhao’s home when the man with the top job in China came from a
meeting with Deng Xiaoping on May 17 after the elder statesmen overruled his
heir apparent and ordered martial law. “Comrade Ziyang was completely
relaxed. He asked me to draft his letter of resignation. I asked him if he
would resign as general secretary of the party or as deputy of the Central
Military Commission. He said: ‘Both.’ So I went away and wrote it.” It was
to be Bao’s last political act.
From that day on he ceased to receive the Party documents that were his job to
process. It was the signal that he was now excluded from power.
He was having lunch on May 28 when he was called to a Standing Committee
meeting. A car was sent to take him to the Zhongnanhai Party headquarters.
But he was driven to a strange building. There he was greeted by a Politburo
member whom he declines to identify. The man shook his hand with particular
emphasis as they parted. He saw that his car had vanished to be replaced by
a police vehicle. “I knew that everything was over. I was being arrested. We
drove for more than an hour and finally went through a large iron gate.
Three men were waiting for me. I asked if I was at Qincheng prison.” He had
entered the jail that has housed China’s greatest political criminals,
including the Gang of Four.
“They told me that I would be known only as Prisoner 8901. Then I knew I was
the first person arrested for the year. It was the start of the crackdown.”
As Prisoner 8901, he stayed there until the completion of his seven-year
sentence in 1996. He has lived under round-the-clock surveillance ever
since.
The intellectual: Zhou Duo
If any one man merits recognition for helping to avert a bloodbath in
Tiananmen Square then it must be Zhou Duo. He was not a student, nor was he
a government official. He was a prominent social scientist, an academic at
the prestigious Peking University who had recently taken a job with one of
China’s earliest and most advanced computer companies. His future was
bright. He was well-respected and had good connections in the Communist
Party.
Like many intellectuals — scholars, writers, think-tank members — he was
caught up in the excitement of the moment. He thought that the students
could use the advice of older, more experienced voices. “But I quickly saw
that the students were in no mood to listen to guidance. If I took any part
it would only end in tears for me.”
And so it did. He was one of four older intellectuals who began a hunger
strike in support of the students on June 2. They pitched their tent beside
the student headquarters at the Martyrs’ Monument in the heart of the
square. The four — including the Taiwanese pop star Hou Dejian — were there
when the shooting started. By the early hours troops had surrounded the
square. But the remaining students, possibly 3,000 to 4,000, refused to
leave. He remembers an atmosphere bordering on hysteria.
While the students squabbled over whether to leave or whether to die, Zhou and
Hou — a household name and face in China — decided to try to negotiate with
the army for a safe exit. They leapt into a minivan and drove to the north
end of the square, towards the famed Tiananmen — the Gate of Heavenly Peace.
“We had to walk the last 100 metres or so. It was the most frightening moments
of my life. I felt as if I was walking into Hell. Everything was dark.
Suddenly I heard a tremendous noise.
The soldiers were cocking their guns. Someone shouted to us to stand still or
they would open fire. We cried out that Hou Dejian had come to negotiate.
There was a pause and then about ten soldiers approached us. I told the
officer that we would tell the students to leave, but we needed to know the
attitude of the army.”
The officer consulted his superiors. For Zhou the wait felt like an age. He
could already see fires as soldiers entered the square and burnt debris. “I
knew that the clearing of the square had begun.” The students were running
out of time. The officer reappeared at last. “He told us that the command
post had agreed to our request. We had to leave by the southeast corner of
the square and we had to be gone before the deadline for the army to clear
the area. No discussion.”
They raced back to the monument to find the students still arguing. Finally,
one student leader called a voice vote. The students shouted and the leader
announced that the voices to leave were louder than those to stay. At last
the students began to withdraw. Zhou waited to bring up the tail, anxious
that some might choose to fight to the end. “I saw everything. I was the
last to leave. There were no students left in tents on the square.” Those
four intellectuals agree: no students were killed in Tiananmen Square.
As dawn broke, the last students straggled out and Zhou looked back. Soldiers
with guns were closing in. “I saw a tank drive up and stop just 20 metres
away from us. Everyone was crying.” He found himself weeping.
The worker: Han Dongfang
As he sips juice in a Hong Kong café, Han Dongfang looks a picture of health.
It is hard to believe that he was once close to death, sick with
tuberculosis contracted in a Chinese prison where he was sent for his part
in the pro-democracy movement on Tiananmen Square.
But he was not a student. He was something that the Party regarded as far more
dangerous: an activist worker. Such a threat, in fact, that when the
Government issued its four wanted lists, he and two other workers merited
one of their own. (The others were for the outspoken astrophysicist Fang
Lizhi, 21 student leaders and for seven “black hand” intellectuals.) It was
all very well for students to take to the streets, but when Han joined other
workers to set up their own tent on a corner of the square, that was quite
another matter. Workers could mobilise in huge numbers. They could form a
potent threat. When Han helped to set up the Beijing Autonomous Workers’
Federation, he was creating an alternative organisation.
Like many, he fled Beijing after the army entered. But then he learnt that he
was wanted. He made his way back to the capital and presented himself to the
police. “Sometimes you shouldn’t know too much or you won’t jump. Sometimes
a historical movement requires stupidity. I am glad that I didn’t know that
much and I was stupid enough to jump in.” He knew when he walked into the
police station that he could even face execution. “You choose to die and
once you have made that decision it’s easy and you can feel proud of your
ending.” He spent 22 months in prison without charges before he was released
on medical grounds.
The Government exiled him to Hong Kong. He chose to stay and set up the China
Labour Bulletin that upholds workers’ interests and rights in China. The
organisation now finds lawyers to defend 600 cases each year with a 95 per
cent success rate. Han attributes that, in part at least, to improvements
made by the Communist Party.
“They are clever. They have made changes to stay in power and to people’s
lives. It is tough to recognise this, but in 20 years the Chinese Parliament
has passed many laws and is on a path towards creating a rule of law.” Much
more remains to be done, he says. Democracy is still far off. “But no
dictator has ever succeeded in erasing history. It may take another 20
years, and then another 20 years.”
The victim: Wang Zhengqiang
It was a warm summer night. The streets of Beijing were quiet. Few people in
China had cars and, anyway, there was little nightlife in those days. A
group of seven friends were cycling home in the early hours of June 7 after
an evening playing cards. Suddenly a voice shouted out of the darkness:
“Don’t move.” That moment changed those lives for ever. They stopped their
bicycles and stood still. Wang Zhengqiang would never speak to his younger
brother again. “Suddenly it was bang, bang, bang. It was the People’s
Liberation Army. They opened fire at us. We all fell flat. I didn’t know
what had happened to the others They fired another round. I was completely
panicked.” The 28-year-old office worker crawled to the foot of a nearby
building and tucked himself as flat as possible on the ground. He lay still.
Out of the darkness appeared a young soldier, little more than 20 years old.
“He came towards me until he was about seven or eight metres away. He
pointed his automatic weapon at me. Neither of us said a word. Because the
distance was a little far I thought that if I spoke it would be in a loud
voice and that might make him nervous. If I spoke in a low voice he might
not hear me. After a while he just opened fire. Paff, paff, paff, a round of
bullets was fired at me. I was hit.”
He thought he was finished. The soldier edged forward. “He came very close. So
I managed to sit up and I held up my hands and said: ‘You’ve made a mistake,
I was just passing by’.” Other soldiers appeared. He heard one say: “This
one’s still alive.” They pulled him on to a nearby footbridge over the road.
One of the seven friends had been killed. The soldiers allowed the two women
to go home.
The other four — Wang and his brother, and two friends who were also brothers
— were kept under guard through the night. Now and again he heard shots. “I
started. One of the soldiers said: ‘Don’t move or I’ll shoot’.” Another one
told him to calm down. Wang remembers drifting in and out of consciousness.
His brother and a friend were silent. The fourth man explained to the
soldiers that they had been on their way home and had nothing to do with the
student demonstrations. “They realised that they had made a mistake. But the
hospitals were too afraid to send out an ambulance. In the end they put us
in an armoured personnel carrier and took us to the hospital.”
It was the start of months of treatment for Wang. He was so badly wounded that
it was not until August that friends finally broke the news that his younger
brother was dead — he was shot in the lung and drowned in his own blood as
he lay on the footbridge.
Even now, Wang still carries the wounds. He married the girlfriend who was
cycling back with him that night, but the bullet caused so much damage to
his abdomen that they were never been able to have children. “This incident
has had a huge affect on my life in terms of the mental impact. Before I was
pretty optimistic person, but since then I am more depressed. And my ability
to move is affected.”
He has received no compensation. “The officials know that it was a mistake. On
June 3, the broadcasts told people not to go out, but by June 5 people were
notified that they could go back to work. In fact, I was still too scared,
but by June 6 I thought it must be all right. There was no broadcast to say
people shouldn’t go out.”
Wang no longer works. He does not appear bitter, but he remains angry. “I was
willing to see you and to talk about the past because I don’t think this
kind of history should just be allowed to be forgotten. The Government hopes
it will be as if it never happened. But that is too unfair.”
The student leader: Zheng Xuguang
Zheng Xuguang was already on the run when he learnt that he had been formally
declared one of the most wanted people in China. He was listening to the
radio when he heard his name read out in ninth place on the list of 21
student leaders of the pro-democracy demonstrations that had convulsed his
country. “When they started going through the names, I realised at
once that I would be on the list. I knew well almost every single person. So
I had to be there. When my name came it was no surprise.” He was on the run,
hiding out in the southern city of Guangzhou (Canton) when the police
finally tracked him down on July 27.
“It came as a relief. No one said very much at the time. They just made a call
and said: ‘We’ve got the goods’.”
His participation was almost inevitable. He was a student of Marxism and
fascinated by the political aspects of the demonstrations. He was a
third-year student but is unashamed of his naivete. “If I had known that I
would be arrested and become a wanted criminal I definitely would not have
become a member. At the time I had no sense of risk. I was interested and
thought it was an important event and so I took part.”
He now lives in a modern home in a leafy community on the northern outskirts
of Beijing and he is under constant surveillance. Three secret police agents
patrol the lane outside his house while he receives visitors — they live in
an apartment around the corner to keep watch on him. Any regrets he has do
not involve this disruption to his life. “What I regret most is that, even
though I was opposed to the [students’] hunger strike, I didn’t do more
about that. I was afraid that I would be declared a traitor and I didn’t
dare voice my viewpoint. When it came to encouraging people to leave the
square I wasn’t determined enough.”
In January 1991, he was sentenced to two years — a much lighter term than he
had expected. He had faced up to 20 years. He has retained his interest in
China’s political system. Effectively his sentence is for life, even if he
can pass the time in a comfortable home with a little garden. It is almost
impossible for him to find a job before the secret police notify his
employers of his past. “I spend 20 per cent of my time playing the stock
market and 80 per cent studying economics. Warren Buffett is my hero.” His
home certainly looks as if has made some successful forays into China’s
notoriously casino-like bourse.
His interest in politics is undimmed. “Chinese civil society has taken off.
The Government is very weak in its control of civil society and this is an
enormous change. The change in the Party is also large.” He says that the
appearance of private property has placed limits on the Party’s power. “I
think democracy is a real possibility. I’m not saying it’s 100 per cent
certain, but to say it won’t happen in my lifetime is too pessimistic. I
still have many years to live. Democracy is possible in five, ten or 20
years.”
The black hand: Chen Ziming
To justify the crackdown, the Communist Party had to back its claim that the
movement was an organised plot to wrest power. It needed “black hands” and
Chen Ziming fitted the bill. He became the most wanted man in China. Now 55,
he served the longest sentence of any political prisoner involved in the
movement, although the soft-spoken intellectual would beg to differ about
being involved. “We so-called black hands had no influence. Some
intellectuals tried to persuade the students to leave the square. I thought
that we shouldn’t be involved, but in the end it seemed people considered
that I should add my voice. In any case the students didn’t listen.” He was
cautious when the students took to the streets. He had his own agenda, his
own plans for China’s political development. In the end he felt that it was
his duty to give advice even though he knew his probable fate.
He was no stranger to politics or to the authorities. He was sentenced to
reform through labour in 1975 after speaking out in support of Deng Xiaoping
— a foe of the Gang of Four. He was a moving force in a tiny pro-democracy
movement in late 1978. He set up China’s first private think-tank, the
Beijing Social and Economic Research Institute in 1986, which published its
own newspaper, the Economics Weekly. His ability to organise and his
powerful mind made him a force to reckon with. Whether or not he played any
behind-the-scenes role in organising the students, he posed a threat in the
eyes of the authorities. They had been monitoring his activities for years.
“I knew that if I did anything, there could be consequences for me.” He’s
unrepentant after 13 years in jail, and remains as politically active as is
possible.
He chose not to go into exile like so many other intellectuals and student
leaders, and is determined to stay in China where he can write under a pen
name even though he’s under constant watch. He admits that he made
miscalculations. When friends begged him to escape he replied that he could
not leave China because he might be away from his homeland for 20 years.
“Now 20 years have gone by and if I were abroad I would still not be able to
come back. That was too optimistic.” It is hard to see whether another 20
years may have to pass before China gets greater democracy. And Chen worries
that the Government’s success in erasing the student movement from Chinese
history could have consequences. “Many young people in China have never
heard of 1989. They know nothing about this. So it could all happen again.”
He writes prolifically even though his works are banned in China. A website,
Reform and Reconstruction, that he launched in 2004 has been blocked. But an
essay he wrote using his personal name in an official publication found its
way into print this month.
He is nothing if not cool and calm about the challenge facing someone whose
life’s work is democracy in China. “We have to go step by step. We can’t be
too impatient.”
