BEIJING, June 4, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Beijing marked 30 years since the deadly
Tiananmen crackdown on Tuesday with a wall of silence and extra security, as
the anniversary turned into a diplomatic slugfest between the United States
and China.
Police checked the identification cards of every tourist and commuter
leaving the subway near Tiananmen Square, the site of the pro-democracy
protests that were brutally extinguished by tanks and soldiers on June 4,
1989.
Foreign journalists were not allowed onto the square at all or warned by
police not to take pictures. Officials told one reporter that “illegal media
behaviour” could impact visa renewals.
Washington — deep in a bruising trade war with Beijing — marked the
occasion by hailing the “heroic” movement of 1989.
The Chinese Communist Party made sure the anniversary remained a distant
memory, detaining several activists in the run-up to June 4 while popular
livestreaming sites conspicuously shut down for “technical” maintenance.
Searches by AFP for the term “Tiananmen” on the Twitter-like Weibo platform
on Tuesday displayed the official logo of the 70th anniversary of the
founding of Communist China.
Over the years, the party has censored any discussion of the protests and
crackdown, which left hundreds, possibly more than 1,000 people, dead —
ensuring that people either never learn about what happened or fear detention
if they dare discuss it openly.
The party and its high-tech police apparatus have tightened control over
civil society since President Xi Jinping took office in 2012, rounding up
activists, rights lawyers and even Marxist students who sympathised with
labour movements.
Countless surveillance cameras are perched on lampposts in and around
Tiananmen Square.
“It’s not that we don’t care. We know what happened,” said a driver for
the DiDi ride-hailing service who was born in 1989.
“But how can I tell you, the DiDi app is recording our conversation in the
car,” he said. “But today’s China has changed. If you have money you have
everything. Without money you dare not open your mouth.”
It was largely business as usual at Tiananmen on Tuesday: Hundreds of
people, including children waving small Chinese flags while sitting on their
parents’ shoulders, lined up before dawn to watch the daily flag-raising at
the square.
But the line moved slowly due to extra security — with IDs matched on
facial recognition screens — and dozens were unable to watch the event.
When asked whether it occurred to her that she was visiting the square on
the 30th anniversary, a nursing school graduate in her 20s from eastern
Shandong province said, “What do you mean? No, it didn’t cross my mind.” Her
mother chimed in: “We don’t think of that past.”
– ‘Heroic protest’ –
But there were rare public acknowledgements of June 4 this year.
China’s defence minister, General Wei Fenghe, on Sunday defended the
crackdown as the “correct” policy to end “political turbulence” at the time.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sharply disagreed on how China has
evolved as he praised the “heroic protest movement” in a statement for the
anniversary.
“Over the decades that followed, the United States hoped that China’s
integration into the international system would lead to a more open, tolerant
society. Those hopes have been dashed,” Pompeo said.
He also denounced the “new wave of abuses” by China, including the mass
incarceration of Uighur Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region.
China dismissed Pompeo’s comments as “lunatic ravings and babbling
nonsense”.
His statement “maliciously attacks China’s political system, denigrates
the state of China’s human rights and religious affairs, wantonly criticises
China’s Xinjiang policy and severely interferes in China’s domestic affairs”,
foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said.
The exchange added to tensions between Washington and Beijing, already
locked in a bitter economic dispute that has impacted two-way trade worth
hundreds of billions of dollars.
In an apparent escalation, Beijing on Tuesday advised Chinese travellers
to exercise caution in the United States, citing crime and police harassment.
The European Union added its voice to criticism of the official amnesia
over Tiananmen.
“Acknowledgement of these events, and of those killed, detained or missing
in connection with the Tiananmen Square protests, is important for future
generations and for the collective memory,” said a statement from EU
diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said the anniversary was a reminder to the
self-ruled island that freedom and democracy are “valuable”.
– ‘Beyond our expectations’ –
In spring 1989, students and workers gathered at the symbolic heart of
Chinese power to demand democratic change and an end to corruption, inspiring
protests across the country.
After seven weeks of demonstrations, the government deployed tanks and
soldiers who chased and killed demonstrators and onlookers in the streets
leading to Tiananmen Square on June 4.
“To open fire on people, that was beyond our expectations,” Wang Dan, who
was a 20-year-old protest leader in 1989, told AFP in a recent interview.
And the quieting of dissident voices continues: Among the string of
activists recently detained or “disappeared” are six artists who had put up
an exhibition titled “A Conscience Movement” in the eastern city of Nanjing.
Separately, folk singer Li Zhi, who had performed songs about Tiananmen,
was reportedly missing, with his music and accounts on Chinese social media
no longer available.
“There is no reason to be optimistic for China now if you look at what’s
happening,” another Tiananmen protest leader, Zhou Fengsuo, told AFP in New
York.
“Even ‘1984’, the novel, couldn’t go that far.”