China's grieving parents

Thousands of Sichuan parents are grief stricken.

They want answers: why did their children die in the Sichuan earthquake when many other people in surrounding, better-constructed buildings, lived? What are the facts? Who should be held responsible? They want a thorough, public investigation. They want justice to be done. They want their government at all levels to be honest about mistakes. They want officials who did make mistakes to take responsibility, to apologize, and to make necessary amends.

We feel their pain. We pray for them. We continue to donate aid to the victims of the Sichuan earthquake.

Unknown hundreds of other Chinese have been grieving for 19 years, unacknowledged. Their loved ones were killed in the June 4th 1989 crackdown. As far as the Chinese government is concerned, those people's grief is illegitimate, nonexistent. They are ignored. We don't know for sure how many they are, since the government denies that the killings happened. If the death of your child, spouse, or sibling is not acknowledged, and if public mourning for them is banned, the state is effectively saying they never existed. Imagine how you would feel.

Ding Zilin, leader of the Tiananmen Mothers organization, has over the past 19 years been subject to frequent detention, constant house-arrest and surveillance. (See this interview with her that I conducted in 1999). She, her husband and other grieving parents have been working tirelessly to compile a record of June 4th casualties, building her information case by case from families who dare to talk to her and share their information. So far they've collected 188 cases. Here is a map documenting the hospitals where people died and this map pinpoints known locations where killings took place. Her website is naturally blocked in China.

In an interview with Reuters, Bao Tong, former aide to purged party leader Zhao Ziyang, called for the Chinese government to be as open about what happened in 1989 as they have been about the earthquake. Granted, the political implications are somewhat different, but he says it's time: "Through this quake ... they have tasted the benefits of openness and should know that openness is better than being closed."

The Reuters story continues:

Despite efforts of dissidents and families of victims to keep memories of Tiananmen alive, the virtual silence on that period within China means few people know much about the movement.

But Bao has remained outspoken about 1989 and he urged the leadership under Hu to disavow Deng's "greatest mistake".

Asked whether it would be unwise for the leadership to reassess the Tiananmen verdict if it was not politically strong enough, Bao said the leadership should "ask the people for help instead of covering it up -- the worst choice".

The government has rejected calls to overturn the verdict that the protests were subversive.

"The June 4 of 19 years ago was a man-made disaster, but like natural disasters it should be made known to the people of the entire country and the whole world," said Bao, who was jailed for seven years and is now an outspoken critic of the government.

"In the end, debts will have to be repaid ... the earlier they are repaid, the more timely, the more thorough, the more it will be in command, the more dignity and the more face it'll have," said Bao, who is under round-the-clock police surveillance.

Bao's position has been quite consistent despite 7 years of jail and constant house arrest, surveillance, and harrassment of his family. Here's an interview from 1999.

Comments

[mahathir_fan]

Ding Zilin is doing a good job. Its precisely the type of information I have been trying to look for in my quest to uncover the truth.

However, I think the bigger issue about discussing Tiananmen incident in China is that the discussion turns political and both sides wants the other to accept his version as the truth.

Take for example, the way to treat the deaths. If everyone were to agree that the civilians died because they were hooligans who first attacked the PLA, I can assure you that their deaths would be recognized as such happily by the government. The Chinese government would be more than happy to open up this incident for discussion. The problem is that there are people who want the people who died that day to be granted some kind of valor or medal of honour. Now, the people who want their deaths to be treated with valor may be right. Maybe some of them were innocent protestors hit by an irresponsible soldier. But the government may also be right in saying that they were first attacked. In fact, video documentation actually showed military trucks lit up in fire, showing that at least at some point in time, the "hooligans" had the upper hand over the military.

So, the the 6-4 incident(as opposed to the Tiananmen Massacre which never happened), it is perhaps best that the strategy is to not discuss it, look towards the future and move on. And let people like Ding Zilin and me to continue our research freely without interuption to continue to uncover the truth about what happened. The interpretation of the truth, we leave that to the history.

Also to my knowledge, the government admitted to 241 deaths. So they do not deny those death as you have said. The government's number is actually higher than what the Tiananmen Mothers have yet been able to uncover, thus still evidencing that the chinese government did come clean on the number of deaths.

Also, I would like to take this opportunity as well as to commemorate the anniversary of the June 4th incident to promote this video of mine on youtube, which shows how the Western perception of what happened on June 4th known to them as Tiananmen Massacre never actually happened.

Myth of Tiananmen Massacre.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SbX0gAk3zRA

Let's remember how they actually died instead of a myth version of how they actually died.

[mahathir_fan]

One more comment is that the map on the link attached is not very useful because it is hard to read. It does not have enough resolution. I cannot zoom in. So I saved a copy and tried to zoom in with another image editor but I still cannot read the names clearly because the resolution is limited. I wish that they can make it more high tech so that it is zoomable or at least the names can be clearly read.

I'm actually trying to correlate the deaths and to ascertain if their location were in fact substantiated with eye witness or if based on unreliable hearsay. I can see that there are 6 claims of deaths on the Square itself. Reading the details, I can find one or two who died on the Square itself. (Still a far cry from the thousands of deaths crushed by tanks as reported by the Western media).

Also, it appears that of the 188 list of people who are considered to have died by the Tiananmen Mothers, at least 2 have committed suicide (#0162 and #0163). That could make the number debatable - 188 or 186.

Finally, I am really serious about up-ing the resolution of that map. This is potential new research material not some kind of poster to fan public sentiment. Let's treat the infomation with academic honesty and openness.

[Charles Liu]

Mrs. Ding's 188 casualty figure is less than what the Chinese government's published official casualty figure, which is 241:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/cron/ (Epilogue, PBS' "Tank Man")

The Chinese government's casualty figure is in-line with our NSA intelligence, according to declassified docuemnt:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/documents/13-01.htm

The NSA estimate at the time was 180-500, while our media were wildly spreading "thousands of students died", "tank crushing students" propaganda - which we now know never happened.

R, I think it's a good case study for your students to understand why the supposedly free and independent western media perpetuated such outlandish TAM stories for decades.

Also, Youtube has an interview of TAM leader Ho Dejian (the Taiwanese folk singer who "defected" to China). I hope you will take a look.

[Charles Liu]

BTW, TAM Mothers website is operated by IFCSS, a dissident group that funded by the NED:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Endowment_for_Democracy:_Grants_By_Country

IFCSS and its part in overseas anti-China propaganda was covered by Roland Soong a while back:

http://zonaeuropa.com/20050912_3.htm

[mahathir_fan]

"TAM Mothers website is operated by IFCSS, a dissident group that funded by the NED"

No wonder they put such a poor quality map on the location of those deaths. The map is not there for people to do research on, but to create an illusion that they are after the truth when in fact, it is actually there to fan emotional outrage and to lend itself some sort of academic legitimacy.