Even 20 years later, the shooting, chaos and death of the final assault on Tiananmen Square remain vivid in the mind of former soldier Zhang Shijun (張世軍). Today, he has become one of the few to publicly voice regret.
In bearing witness about his role in the military crackdown on the 1989 student demonstrations in Beijing, Zhang says he hopes to add momentum to calls for an investigation and reassessment of the protest movement — and to further its ultimate goal of a democratic China.
“I feel like my spirit is stuck there on the night of June 3,” Zhang, 40, said in an interview at his home in the dusty northern city of Tengzhou, referring to the date in 1989 when the final assault began.
Zhang’s tortured memories have gained a global audience among China’s dissident community in the weeks since he posted an open letter online to the Communist Party leader, President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
In it, he relates some of what he saw when posted on the night of June 3 to June 4, along with an account of the persecution he underwent after asking for an early discharge and his belief that China must eventually clear its collective conscience of the tragic events.
“The responsibility can’t just be laid on the military,” Zhang said. “It’s really the responsibility of all Chinese.”
MEMORIES
Zhang was just 18 when he joined the elite 54th Group Army’s 162nd Motorized Infantry Division based in the central city of Anyang. Less than three years later, with student-led protests gathering pace, Zhang’s units were ordered to Beijing on April 20, 1989.
There, they camped on the capital’s southwestern edge while citizens erected barricades to block their progress toward Tiananmen, the vast square in the heart of the city where the students had established their headquarters.
On June 3, their orders came: Drive through to the square and get it cleared.
Heading east toward the square, Zhang and his comrades abandoned their vehicles as bricks and rocks flew at their heads and bullets were fired at them by unknown shooters from upper stories of apartment buildings. Members of his unit fired over the heads of civilians as a warning, according to Zhang, who said he was serving as a medic and was unarmed in the final assault.
Zhang said he knew of no deaths caused by the troops of the 54th army — a claim impossible to disprove as long as official files on the events remain closed. Most of the post-crackdown reports pinned the hundreds, possibly thousands of deaths among civilians and students on two other units, the 27th and 38th group armies based outside Beijing.
By daylight the next morning, Zhang said his unit established a cordon along the square’s southern edge between a KFC restaurant and the mausoleum of communist China’s founder, Mao Zedong (毛澤東).
Zhang said other details were still too sensitive to tell, suggesting atrocities such as the shooting in the back of unarmed students and civilians. While other eyewitnesses have made similar allegations, they remain impossible to independently confirm.
After their withdrawal, Zhang said he asked for and eventually obtained an early discharge, never having expected to be sent to fight ordinary Chinese citizens. After returning to Tengzhou he began a discussion group promoting market economics and politics, but was arrested on March 14, 1992, and sentenced to three years in a labor camp for political crimes.
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