The Tiananmen Square Massacre and Its Suppression
The Chinese government's crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989 came to be symbolized by this iconic image of one man blocking a tank advance. For weeks, students had occupied the space, demanding economic and political reforms. Eventually, officials had had enough. They declared martial law, and the military moved in. Beginning in the early hours of June 4th, soldiers fired on civilians. Estimates range from a few hundred to several thousand people killed. The movement was successfully suppressed, and its memory has also been successfully suppressed in China.
1.4 billion people—that's a fifth of the world's population—do not have ready access to the facts of what happened in Tiananmen Square. Beijing has never shown any remorse or given a clear account of what happened.
A single day in 1989 completely changed Yov's life. Photos taken years before the massacre show a young family in the 1980s—Yov with her small son and her husband, Mingo. He was shot 30 years ago, on June 4th, 1989, and died in the hospital. His was just one of hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths that night.
"The massacre is the worst thing that has ever been done to people in this country. The government hasn't answered the question of what happened on June 4th, nor has it apologized, and I regret that very much."
Not only has the government never apologized, but it also refuses to talk about it. Officially, these images do not exist. They are taboo. In the spring of 1989, hundreds of thousands of Chinese took to the streets of Beijing to demand reforms and freedom. The uprising against the communist leadership was spearheaded by students.
Erasing History – The Government’s Censorship and Control
One of their leaders was Voici, who was 21 at the time. He now lives in what he calls exile—Taiwan. This is how he appeared on Chinese state media back then. Today, he is hardly known in China.
"If you look me up, look my name, you search into, let's say, Baidu, the Chinese version of Google—I don't exist. The Chinese government has decided to wipe out this face of history completely."
Chinese websites bring up no links or references to Voici or 1989. Only a dubious article with the title Tiananmen Massacre: A Myth.
It’s the same with school textbooks. The events of 1989—the uprising, the deaths—are all absent.
The evening news on June 4th was mostly state propaganda, but one detail belied the truth. The anchors wore black to signify sorrow and sympathy for the deaths. After the broadcast, the female anchor, Du Sha, was barred from ever presenting the news again. The official forgetting had begun.
Yov Vee Che, whose husband died in 1989, is working against this forced amnesia. She wants to remember June 4th and regularly meets others who lost loved ones that day. But they say the state is bullying and watching them.
"If everyone in this country had access to information about what happened, they’d be furious. But the government has concealed it for 30 years. Just because young people today know very little about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen."
Indeed, it did. But the subject is off-limits for the Chinese leadership. Forgetting and suppression instead of remembering—silence and no apology. But not everyone is playing along.
The Power of Propaganda and the Fight to Remember
Joining me now is Louisa Lim, author of The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, a book about the power of propaganda.
"Louisa, give us a sense of just how thorough the erasure and propaganda have been."
"The erasure has been surprisingly effective in China, particularly among young people—those who were not yet born at the time. In 1989, when I was writing my book, I went around the campuses of four universities and asked 100 students whether they could recognize the picture of Tank Man—that famous image of the young man standing in front of a line of tanks. Only 15 out of 100 people knew what it was."
"It was interesting because it was really obvious who knew what it was and who didn’t, just from their body language. It was also quite clear from the questions they asked me that they had simply never seen this image before. That was something that really surprised me."
"There are 1.4 billion people in China. I know you did a little bit of a poll on a college campus, but is it really possible that the vast majority of people in China have no idea Tiananmen happened? And is it possible that some people do know but just can’t talk about it openly?"
"For sure, there were people who lived through those events and have decided over time not to talk about them. And I think what we’ve seen is that the real cost of active acts of memory—of talking about what happened, of commemorating it—has become higher and higher. So people have made the decision to remember but not to talk about it, effectively erasing it from their own memories."
"But we’re also seeing quite a lot of evidence that even young people who might be in a position to know don’t. We saw one instance where a newspaper printed a picture of students or people with bullet wounds being rushed to a hospital from 1989. The only reason that picture was printed was that no one working at the newspaper—not the page editor, not the picture editor, not even the censor—recognized what that picture was. It’s a real sign that the collective institutional memory of June 4th has been quite effectively erased."
"Is there any scenario in which you think the Chinese government would finally acknowledge what happened in 1989?"
"I mean, they don’t deny what happened; they just refuse to change their stance on it. This year, we’ve seen comments from a government official—the defense minister—and also an editorial in a government newspaper, The Global Times, which really doubles down on the government’s position. The editorial states, ‘This move inoculated China against future turmoil and allowed China to become rich and powerful.’ That’s the government’s line, and there’s absolutely no sign of it changing anytime soon."
"Louisa Lim, thank you."
"Thank you."
Source: DW News. (2019, June 3). How China is covering up the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre | DW News [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZE4R4B6Afg