In May 1989, Wang Dan (王丹) was 20 years old. With a megaphone held up to his thin face, which was in part masked by his large glasses, he rallied the pro-democracy crowds in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Little more than a month later, after a deadly crackdown by Chinese troops, he found himself on the top of the country’s most-wanted list.
Now, 30 years on, the US-based dissident still remembers every minute of those pivotal days, when student-led pro-democracy activists demonstrated for weeks — a huge embarrassment for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Photo: AP
Ultimately, early on June 4, 1989, Chinese tanks and soldiers crushed the movement, killing hundreds, and by some estimates more than 1,000.
“We never expected that,” Wang said in an interview near his home in the suburbs of Washington. “To open fire on people, that was beyond our expectations.”
He said that he was “very surprised” once the bloodshed had ended to find himself atop China’s list of student protest leaders wanted by the police.
“I was not the most famous student leader at that time. I was one of them,” he said. “After so many years, I realized there must be some reason, and that reason is that I was different from other student leaders in only one thing: I had a very close relationship with intellectuals, and the government wanted to label these protests as provoked by intellectuals.”
When the Chinese People’s Liberation Army sent tanks and machine-gun-toting troops onto Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, Wang was not on the sprawling plaza facing the Forbidden City and the Great Hall of the People.
“I was in a dorm on my campus, but I got a lot of phone calls from my friends along Tiananmen Square ... so gradually I learned that more and more people died,” he said.
He tried to make it back to the square with other students on bicycles, but “every street was blocked by the police and the soldiers,” he said.
“We didn’t make it,” he said.
The scale of the bloodshed — the real toll is still a mystery — left Wang devastated.
“I remember feeling totally numb. I couldn’t think about anything. That situation lasted for at least two days,” he said.
Eventually he realized that he needed to think about going into hiding, Wang said.
His face was plastered all over state television.
He fled to northeastern China’s Heilongjiang Province. He also spent some time in Shanghai.
After about a month, he realized that his situation was desperate, he said.
“Hiding in my friends’ houses could bring a lot of potential danger for my friends. I didn’t want to bring trouble to them,” Wang said.
So he returned to Beijing, his hometown, and was arrested almost immediately.
However, given his high profile, he received a relatively light sentence: four years in prison for “counter-revolutionary” activities.
“Life in jail in my case is not very representative, because my case is very special. I drew a lot of international attention about my situation, so they treated me OK,” he said.
“They didn’t beat me, there was no serious torture,” he added, though he was placed in solitary confinement.
Wang earned a conditional release in 1993, but became quickly disillusioned with the concept of freedom.
“I was followed by the police every day. Anywhere I would go, some police would follow me,” he said. “That was just another kind of prison.”
Although Wang was well aware that any human rights activism or defense of democratic ideals could land him back behind bars in his homeland, he chose to travel in China and promote his beliefs.
“I still felt I had some obligations and responsibilities towards those persons who died in 1989 or sacrificed their youth,” Wang said.
Of course, he was arrested again. This time, he was handed an 11-year prison sentence.
In 1998, he was again freed, ostensibly for medical reasons, and sent to the US, where he has continued his fight for democracy in China while earning a degree in history from Harvard University.
The dissident has not returned to China in 20 years, but his parents still live here and he thinks about going all the time.
“Sooner or later, I am confident. I just don’t know when,” he said.
In a separate interview ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, Hu Jia (胡佳), one of China’s most well-known rights activists, said from Beijing via telephone that he could never forget those who died fighting for democracy and he prayed for democratic reforms in the country so that the people killed will not have died for nothing.
Hu was a 15-year-old teenager living in Beijing when the protesters occupied Tiananmen Square.
Hu said that even now he still remembers the indescribable excitement in his heart when he, squeezed among protesters, chanted slogans along with the “big brothers and sisters.”
On the night of June 3, 1989, Hu said that his father had insisted he stay home.
“My father grabbed me with all his strength and sealed the doors to stop me from going out,” Hu said.
His insistence saved Hu, as military troops were mobilized that evening to “sweep” demonstrators off Tiananmen Square with rifles and tanks.
After hearing a government-issued statement that “no one died” during the clear-out action by the military, Hu said he lost faith in the rule of the CCP entirely.
“The party’s image shattered in my mind. Since then, I have never believed in the party’s propaganda,” he said.
The communist regime claims that it always stands by the side of the people, but the Tiananmen crackdown made him a person who “sternly stood on the opposite side of the Chinese communists,” Hu said.
Over the years, Hu has devoted himself to democracy, civil rights and environmental protection movements in China. In 2008, he was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail for “inciting subversion of state power.” Later that year the European Parliament named him its winner of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Being one of the most prominent advocates of rights in China, Hu is always sent on a “holiday” before the anniversary of the massacre, to keep him from “causing trouble.”
He said he was unable to reject “forced holidays,” but hopes his existence “can work to keep history from being forgotten.”
Expressing his plan to mark the 30th anniversary of the crackdown with 24 hours of fasting and praying, the activist said that in his heart there was always the blood of those who died on Tiananmen Square.
“I pray for reforms of China, its peaceful transformation” so that they would not die for nothing, Hu said.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
‘JOINT SWORD’: Whatever President Lai says in his Double Ten speech, China would use it as a pretext to launch ‘punishment’ drills for his ‘separatist’ views, an official said China is likely to launch military drills this week near Taiwan, using President William Lai’s (賴清德) upcoming national day speech as a pretext to pressure the nation to accept its sovereignty claims, Taiwanese officials said. China in May launched “punishment” drills around Taiwan shortly after Lai’s inauguration, in what Beijing said was a response to “separatist acts,” sending heavily armed warplanes and staging mock attacks as state media denounced newly inaugurated Lai. The May drills were dubbed “Joint Sword — 2024A” and drew concerns from capitals, including Washington. Lai is to deliver a key speech on Thursday in front of the Presidential Office
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Taiwan was listed in 14th place among the world's wealthiest country in terms of GDP per capita, in the latest rankings released on Monday by Forbes magazine. Taiwan's GDP per capita was US$76,860, which put it at No. 14 on the list of the World's 100 Richest Countries this year, one spot above Hong Kong with US$75,130. The magazine's list of the richest countries in the world is compiled based on GDP per capita data, as estimated by the IMF. However, for a more precise measure of a nation's wealth, the magazine also considers purchasing power parity, which is a metric used to
RSS