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Editorial: The lessons of June 4th

Who still remembers the Chinese government's brutal military suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square 13 years ago today? People in Hong Kong and Taiwan have not forgotten, nor have international human rights groups. Every year since 1989, demonstrations have been held on June 4 in major cities around the world to commemorate those democracy activists who died in the crackdown or have been imprisoned. The Chinese government also remembers in its own way -- with annual roundups of dissidents and activists ahead of the anniversary. The Tiananmen massacre has become an indelible scar.

Thirteen years on, more than 200 of those arrested for pro-democracy activities are still in prison, according to the human rights group Amnesty International. More dissidents continue to be detained.

One of this year's high-profile detainees is Yang Jianli (楊建利), who was arrested in Yunnan Province in April. A Harvard-educated Chinese citizen, Yang returned to Beijing in 1989 to support the democracy movement and represent the Chinese students attending the University of California at Berkeley. Yang later returned to the US and dedicated himself to research on China's democratization, thereby earning Beijing's ire. China refused to renew his passport and denied him entry. Nevertheless, Yang entered China on April 18 using someone else's passport. He was later arrested and has not been heard from since. International and Taiwanese human rights groups have launched protest actions to save Yang.

Denying dissidents entry for political reasons is a common tool of authoritarian regimes. Arrested dissidents and political activists, however, can also serve the state in a variety of ways. They can be held up as examples to terrorize the rest of the populace against pushing for reforms. If a government wants to bolster its image either at home or abroad, releasing jailed activists is always worth a few public-relations points. And dissidents always make dandy bargaining chips when foreign governments or human rights groups press for their release.

Chinese authorities excel at both squashing protests and extracting the last pound of flesh from dissidents to further their own agenda. A good example was China's decision to allow dissident Fang Lizhi (方勵之) and his wife, who had taken refuge in the US embassy in Beijing after the Tiananmen massacre, to emigrate to the US.

The KMT government also used to blacklist dissidents and deny them entry to Taiwan. It didn't end the practice until 1996, after many dissidents managed to sneak back into the country, in coordination with massive resistance movements organized by the opposition. Taiwan's human rights situation has improved vastly since then. Even a controversial figure like Justin Lin (林毅夫), a former ROC army officer who defected to China in 1979, was able to get a visa to return for his father's funeral. Lin ended up deciding against making the trip, apparently because of the threat of legal action over his defection.

The different human rights situations on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are reflected in the differences in how Yang and Lin have been handled. Beijing should understand that arresting democracy activists does not provide a security guarantee -- it only creates a liability. The harder it tries to suppress internal dissent, the greater the people's resistance will be, and the further China will be from winning the hearts of the people of Taiwan. Only by adopting universal human rights standards will China's domestic pressures be balanced.
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