http://www.telegraph.co.uk
Thursday 08 May 2014

China must break cowardly silence on Tiananmen

With the 25th anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown approaching, the relatives of victims tell Communist leaders they must stop pretending killings “did not happen”

China’s top leaders must break their “cowardly” and “foolish” silence over the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, relatives of more than 100 victims have said on the eve of its 25th anniversary.

In an open letter, published to coincide with the start of two major political summits in Beijing, the Tiananmen Mothers group urged Chinese leaders to allow discussion of “mistakes of the past” and vowed to “persevere” in their quest for “truth, compensation [and] accountability.”

“You say our economy has grown to become the second largest in the world, and in a few more years, the largest, but you are still left with only cowardice and foolishness,” wrote the group, which is made up of the relatives of those who were killed or injured in the notorious 1989 incident.

On June 4 this year, a quarter of a century will have passed since the Communist Party’s brutal military offensive against hundreds of thousands of protestors in Beijing and other Chinese cities.

Since then Chinese leaders have sought to airbrush the events from history, with public discussion, investigation or remembrance of the “liu si” or “June 4” incident outlawed.

Rights groups say hundreds of Chinese citizens were killed or wounded as troops moved in on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 3 and June 4 but to this day the exact number of victims has never been agreed.

Hong Kong is likely to host huge pro-democracy demonstrations marking this year’s milestone anniversary. But in mainland China, where the crackdown remains a forbidden topic, few dare to speak out.

Hu Jia, one of the most outspoken dissidents still living on the mainland, said he had spent eight hours in police custody this week because of his activisim which includes calling for protests to mark the 25th anniversary. “The truth of Tiananmen Square is still buried,” he told The Telegraph.

Meanwhile, the Tiananmen Initiative Project, an online petition intended to remember victims, was blocked by Chinese internet censors within weeks of its launch last year, according to Steven Levine, an American historian and the petition’s creator.

The Tiananmen Mothers letter, which was released on Friday ahead of the opening of Beijing’s National People’s Congress on March 5, accused generation after generation of Chinese leader of pretending the crackdown “did not happen”.

Today’s leadership must atone for “mistakes of the past” by finally allowing its discussion, it added, according to a translation by the group Human Rights in China.

“In the past 24 years, we, the Tiananmen Mothers, have braved great hardships in our arduous quest, but we are not discouraged and have not given up.”

Quoting one, unnamed mother, it continued: “At the very least, we should be given the truth, the facts and a clear admission of wrongdoing.”

“Could it be that we are forced to leave this world in despair? This despair has already tormented us for 25 years.”

Among the letter’s signatories are Wang Fandi, whose 19-year-old son was shot in the head, Liu Shuqin, whose 30-year-old son was shot in the leg and back, and Xu Jue, whose son was also gunned down by People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops.

The letter also carried the names of 35 deceased campaigners, including Ya Weilin. His son, Ya Aiguo, was shot in the head in 1989. After more than two decades campaigning for justice, Mr Ya committed suicide in the underground garage of his Beijing home in May 2012.

Steven Levine, the creator of the Tiananmen Initiative Project, said it was crucial the world commemorated the 25th anniversary of an event the Communist Party was seeking to “sweep under the rug.”

“This is not an episode that is closed off and belongs in the history books, it is very much connected with the way the current leadership deals with human rights issues, with environmental issues, with a whole series of issues that require public airing,” said Prof. Levine, a China expert who previously worked at the University of Montana.

Prof. Levine said he was not “delusional” and did not expect any immediate change in position from the Communist Party.

“The current leadership of China is in a direct line of succession to the people who literally pulled the trigger or ordered the triggers pulled back in 1989,” he said.

However, he believed China was moving towards “some kind of reckoning with the historical truth.”

“At some point – I don’t know how long it will be, it may take decades – I think there will be a reckoning, a reconfiguring of history and I think that the people who took part in these demonstrations will be seen to be what they were - patriotic Chinese who wanted to improve their system not destroy it.”