The relatives of civilians killed by Chinese troops who crushed pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square with machine guns and tanks on the night of June 3-4, 1989, have written to President Xi Jinping calling for an official reckoning with the bloodshed on the 35th anniversary of the crackdown.
“We will never forget the lives that were lost to those brutal bullets or crushed by tanks on June 4 35 years ago,” the letter said.
“Those who disappeared, whose relatives couldn’t even find their bodies to wipe away the blood and bid them a final farewell,” the letter said. “It is too cruel that this happened along a 10-kilometer stretch of Chang’an Boulevard in Beijing in peacetime.”
Public mourning for victims or discussion of the events of spring and summer 1989 are banned in China, and references to June 4, 1989, are blocked, filtered or deleted by the Great Firewall of government internet censorship.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, died when late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping ordered troops into the Chinese capital to clear protesters and hunger-striking students from Tiananmen Square.
While any account of the events of that summer have been scrubbed from the public record, younger people have been able to find out about it by visiting overseas websites, and have started taking part in annual commemorative activities around the world alongside exiled Hong Kongers.
Campaigning for accountability
The letter is the latest to be addressed to China’s highest-ranking leader in what has become an annual ritual for the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of bereaved relatives that campaigns for official accountability, transparency about the death toll and compensation for victims’ families.
It said official rhetoric on the crackdown was “intolerable” to the families of victims because it “reverses right and wrong, and ignores the facts.”
The letters have never gotten a reply, and bereaved relatives are typically asked to keep a low profile when the sensitive anniversary of the bloodshed rolls around.
Calls to group spokesperson You Weijie and member Zhang Xianling rang unanswered on Friday after the letter was published.
Former 1989 student protester Zheng Xuguang, who now lives in the United States, said he isn’t surprised by the deafening silence from Beijing, which has described the weeks-long student-led pro-democracy movement on Tiananmen Square as “counterrevolutionary rebellion,” or “political turmoil.”
“How can they admit that they were wrong to kill people?” Zheng said. “Xi Jinping and the Communist Party are co-dependent; if Xi were to reappraise the official verdict of June 4 … the Communist Party would fall from power.”
“I don’t think he’s going to do that, because there’s no room in his ideology for these ideas.”
Tseng Chien-yuen, an associate professor at Taiwan’s Central University, said today’s China is in sore need of some reflection on the massacre, however.
“They need to look at it again and reappraise it, apologize and compensate the innocent students and others who were shot and killed back then, and think about whether to hold those responsible accountable,” Tseng said.
“I don’t think Xi Jinping would need to bear the historical responsibility for the legacy of [late supreme leader] Deng Xiaoping,” he said.
Poll: What would you do?
RFA’s Mandarin Service asked its followers and listeners in a poll on X whether they would join the 1989 student movement today, if they could travel back in time to 1989.
Many listeners responded outright that they would, while others said their view of the tragedy was colored by the official view, and didn’t change until they left China. Others said they have become more radical than the 1989 protesters.
“We were very naive back then, because we didn’t want to overthrow the Communist Party, but to reform it,” a person who gave only the nickname Matt responded. “Unfortunately, the Communist Party didn’t even give people the chance to do that.”
“For our generation, June 4 is an unfamiliar expression,” wrote a high schooler from the northeastern city of Qingdao. “Growing up under the red flag of this fake party, we have been indoctrinated with the idea that loving the party and loving the country are the same thing.”
Another responded by email that they hadn’t believed overseas media reports about the massacre at first, despite finding them on overseas websites.
“Mainland Chinese were either misled by their pro-party stance, or they knew a little more than that, but still thought that the protests had to be brought to an end somehow,” they said.
A respondent who gave the nickname Key said he had learned about the massacre and the student movement from older people in his family, and said he admired the 1989 protesters, but added: “Times have changed, and the younger generation needs to fight for their rights in a peaceful and rational way.”
User “wophb” wrote: “35 years on, the June 4 incident still has a profound impact on us and is worth reflecting on. Each generation has a unique mission.”
Drawing a parallel with the “white paper” protests across China in 2022, the user said they would consider taking part in the 1989 movement if they could go back in time.
Successful brainwashing
Wu Heming, a Chinese student currently in California, said he is still noticing the after-effects of his education at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party two years after arriving on American soil.
“This is mainly because the Chinese Communist Party’s brainwashing in education is very, very successful,” Wu said. “From childhood onwards, people have no other channels through which to access any other information, so all of your thought patterns get solidified by that rhetoric.”
Another student and former “white paper” protester Zhang Jinrui said the two movements had a lot in common. “
“If you compare those who participated in the June 4 incident and those who participated in the white paper movement, they were both trying to promote democracy in China, but in different contexts,” Zhang said.
White paper” protesters got their name from holding up blank sheets of paper during spontaneous protests at the end of November 2022 amid pent-up frustration with years of COVID-19 restrictions that came to a head after an apartment building fire in Urumqi, in the far-western part of the country, killed inhabitants who reportedly were trapped inside.
Zhang also believes that times have changed, however.
“Many people of my generation have absorbed liberal ideas that have developed in the world over the past few decades, including national self-determination, respect for the identities of sexual minorities and of ethnic minorities,” Zhang said.
“In the 1980s, a lot of people were asking ‘what kind of China do we want?’ instead of wondering whether the concept of China is even necessary,” he said. “Now my generation is starting to deconstruct this concept.”
More darkly, Zhang added: “I think they were motivated by hope, while our generation is motivated by despair — we did what we did out of despair under [COVID-19] lockdown. All we could do was to take a gamble.”
Author and university professor Rowena He, who took part in the 1989 movement, said she still marks the anniversary every year, and holds onto the hope she felt back then.
“We all felt that we had nothing,” she told a symposium marking the 25th anniversary at Georgetown University on April 18. “They had guns, tanks, and machine guns.”
“But in the end, I think many of my generation…still kept the faith alive, while Hong Kong lit candles for us for 30 years, for truth and justice.”
“I think history is on our side,” He said. “One day we will see truth and justice.”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
