history
6-4-89
by tuck
Tue 04 Jun 2002 13:49:51
i remember my parents explaining to me what happened on June 4th in Tiananmen Square after the american media began its typical frenzy of spitting emotional content directly onto our tv room carpets. students were murdered for protesting the same government which murdered them. some foreign reporters at the time said hundreds of people died. but of course, they were mostly running away from bullets, so couldnt really see. i remember my history teacher in high school, Ms. Vadebonceur (we got extra points on tests if we could spell her name correctly) a product of Colby College (a liberal arts school very similar to Bates, and also in Maine) spending an entire eerie class discussing Chinese lunacy. she had the Tiananmen Square death toll at a couple thousand at least. the following year when i was in India, my roommate, Lima, who was from a small northeastern state called Nagaland, was terrified of the chinese (for reasons which would take too long to explain here) and explained how in India, the Tiananmen Square body count was said to be as high as 10,000. i was also told in history class there (this was 1996, during the first real China-Taiwan showdown, so we were covering China pretty well) that pro-democracy advocates all over the country were killed that day, not just in Beijing. The official Chinese report on the matter was that there was only a small handful of casualties.
its hard to know what to think, or, as the chinese government would prefer, whether to think about it at all. china has made so much progress since then; people can now wear shoulder-exposing shirts, they can joke about politicians without getting thrown in jail (usually, anyway). but a few months ago something happened that really bothered me: i was reminded that according to the chinese govt, Tiananmen never happened. a chinese highschool student friend of mine doesnt know anything about June 4, 1989. he asked: was there an accident or something? somethings wrong there; the unacknowledged massacre haunts my optimism. it was only 13 years ago, yet it seems completely forgotten. is the Party actually capable of erasing history? as i sit here typing, on this 13th anniversary of the murders, the entire country is watching their team play Costa Rica in the world cup of soccer. the only massacre on their minds is one of sports victory. maybe they have the right idea: just move on. maybe theyre now conditioned to feel like being heard is hopeless, and that no amount of speaking out and the resulting jailings will change the iron fist rule of this still corrupt and oppressive and usually ridiculous government. by thinking back to 6-4-89 im cursed with brain-numbing frustration. the fact that the government still lies about the reality of what happened, that it tried to kill off anyone who saw anything, including bystanders and people watching from high-rise windows, that it even had police guards at the graves of the victims each june 4th for years after to prevent anyone from mourning them, that it boarded up the Square on the 10 year anniversary of the murders claiming it was under construction (police guards quickly informed anders and i that taking pictures or even peeking at the merely under construction site was illegal, for some reason)... it all makes me remember that even though the country is seeing some money, looking a bit better, and filled with more smiles, i must never mistake this new atmosphere for political freedom. this country is still an iron-fisted authoritarian regime, and the authority of the Communist Party is not to be questioned in any way, ever. unless, of course, you want to spend 8 years in reform camp or be shot in the back of the head.
move on, or remember? moving on is easy when you see the progress which has been made, but hard when you remember that those killed were students like us, asking to be heard. theyre still dead of course, mostly unremembered, many with bullet holes in their backs from running away, terrified and shocked that the long trusted PLA would actually shoot them, their own people, for trying to initiate positive change.
comments
Mark Boudreau - Tue 04 Jun 2002 13:50:51
6-4-89 is a good rallying point for freedom loving individuals to focus their rage, but to my libertarian eyes, there seem to be daily events in that country that would make me scream. The fact that people can be executed for tax evasion just baffles me. Even if you can't nail down a number of people killed 13 years ago, it is safe to assume and easy to confirm that the government has continued killing the people they rule over since then and don't appear likely to ease up any time soon. I hope the people haven't given up. I hope they think there is a better way for them to live. I hope they try to remember every atrocity and pray that someday they are able to topple the murderous bastards. It would just be too depressing to see a nation that large give up.kamden - Tue 04 Jun 2002 13:51:51
Ok, so here is the other side of the coin. The murders at Tiananmen are completely unexcuseable under any stretch of the imagination. The Chinese government is on many levels corrupted practically beyond repair. The problem is that the democracy wanted by the students of 1989 would have thrown China into a state practically worse than that of the Cultural Revolution. Remember Russia??? The Communist Party knows that it is corrupt, authoritarian, and for lack of a better word... fascist, why else obscure true history. They also know that there is no way to change the government in China without throwing the country into an economic tailspin. As far as the party sees it, they are on the man man lai. Easy does it. I have a great deal of faith that the Tiananmen square massacre will be recognised in the future. The party just has to crack down on its own corruption, educate its members better, and establish a bona fide legitimacy before it can happen. Fury over the Tiananmen massacre is warranted, and many people do know that it happened. The problem is the fierce nationalism that prevents activism. Chinese believe that China is the center of the world, and while their government has many many issues, their quality of life on the whole is improving. All of the Graduate students that i study with know about Tiananmen. They treat it just like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. "Ummm, yeah that was bad, lets forget about it. We got the Olympics in 2008. Go China. wooohooo!" It always makes me feel sorry for these sheep, but I do envy their esprit de corps. The people think that the government has lots o problems, but the government does more good than harm. They will refer you to the statistics, the cell phones, the WTO entry, and the Olympics. The Students in 1989 were well intentioned and idealisticly strong, but they lacked any comprehension of what they were doing. Their success would have been the downfall of the country. One needs to look at the realistic side of this. In all, the government was murderously terrible in what it did, but the students were posing a big risk to development and they had no idea how to stop it. Give it time. Democracy is not always the best system for everyone all the time. It would throw China into chaos if not developed properly. The country will demand it soon enough.Mark Boudreau - Tue 04 Jun 2002 13:53:51
kamden, while I agree with most of what you say, governments (especially fascist govt's) don't have a tendency to fix themselves unless there is an incentive to do so. Civil unrest and extremism is often that incentive. Of course it is idealistic and naive to think that China can be a free society tomorrow, but to relentlessly work to achieve that freedom is the only way to try and make a totalitarian government accountable and responsible. The students may have been naive, but they are necessary for healthy political discourse. I think the best and most realistic way they could have succeeded would have been if they had been tolerated by the government instead of obliterated. I don't know if your statement that the government is incapable of changing without hurting the economy is true. Many of the changes China has seen have been to benefit the economy, but have been drastic changes compared to what the country used to be like. People are even talking about allowing business owners to be Party members! Why can the government free up trade and business without freeing up society as well? I know this is just my western bias, imposing Locke and Friedman on a society built around Mao and Marx, but that's just the way I see it. I hope that the more freedom the Chinese citizens taste, the more they'll hunger for. At least, that's what I hope. I hope that for all people though, not just the Chinese. But, I've never been to China, so what do I know. *shrug*kurtis - Tue 04 Jun 2002 13:52:51
Travesties like 6-4-89 make me uncontrollably violent. A perfect example of why man should never have been allowed to progress beyond the dark ages, if even beyond the bronze age. We are simply not civilized enough, no matter how much we may arrogantly try and convince ourselves otherwise. Man needs to go away, go back to the trees and eat some more fruit and throw rocks at things. The world as a whole would be better off. I despise humanity for all of the terrible things it has created. Just when people are almost getting it right, humanity's knee-jerk reaction is to violently oppose it and run people over with tanks. What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK???sarah - Tue 04 Jun 2002 13:54:51
Kurtis that makes me smile. And no, not the smile of condescending whateverness... Sometimes I agree... or want to. I like the idea of not dying in childbirth and the outlawing of gangrape as a saturday night past time. How about hand-made weapons from found objects only. Save the technology and 'civilization' for where it creates cafes and personal hygene.kurtis - Tue 04 Jun 2002 13:55:51
Well thank you. Most of the time the only reaction I get is the regular "smile and agree and maybe he wont eat me" kind of reaction. I guess my point is, I kind of wish humans were NOT the species to actually go all out and become the intelligent race to dominate. I wish mother nature had a little more patience and perhaps even from humans could evolve a more tame, and civil race that would be better suited to accomplish what humans have been attempting for centuries. I admit, technology very well may save us from ourselves by providing a balancing factor in the chaos that is the animal of man, but I would have much preferred just a species capable of this on its own. Make any sense? Probably not considering I generally make no sense. Anyhow I like my hiking boots, and music collection and ... oh well. Monday.tuck - Tue 04 Jun 2002 13:56:51
heres a first time stab at evolutionary fatalism. i'm bored enough to state the obvious. theres no solution. its our nature. humans are survivalists whose means are control, and supremacy. survivalist, modal thinking is as patched into our genetic code as our will to reproduce. this element of our existence creates a chain reaction of increasingly dangerous circumstances which carry sequentially heavier consequences. yet, preventing the first domino from toppling seems only possible for beings who are not human to begin with. humans naturally strive for control (the first domino) as it provides the security which is necessary for personal survival. but control of any kind causes reflexive, toppling fear in everyone else. the result is that the fearful then establish a power-base for themselves (the next domino) in order to alleviate anxiety and to prevent the possibility of being subjected to the will of the feared. when their strength approaches adequacy, immediately the fear process begins again within the hearts of those looking on at their successes and resulting capability to control. there will always be a person wanting to fight for this control, which is, necessarily, a fight for power. this requires the entire world to consider defense. defense requires power. power causes fear and resentment. fear and resentment cause war, and war produces stronger defense. humans also live to establish supremacy, particularly through leadership. Alpha Wolf-ism is part of the evolutionary drive to survive. in taking a systems approach to examining our own ecology, we see that human leaders are kept strong through competitive selection. competition on the global level occurs mainly through economics which seem unavoidably tied to warfare. the more money a country has, the more potent is its ability to exercise degrees of control. but even as we identify the problems facing human tendency in national relations, a solution does not lie in segregation, for strife occurs at every juncture of human existence, not just inter-communally. our opportunist nature is microcosmically visible in the fact that criminals exist in every society, in every community, everywhere in the world. and theyre not just the poor have-nots acting on instinctual resistance to starvation like little-boy fruit thieves in a chinese village. look at embezzlement. look at all white collar crimes. look at political corruption... these things exist in even the most stable, affluent countries by some of the most financially comfortable people. these people dont even know why they steal, most of the time. its a depressing paradox to face as we try to advance while being anchored down by the counterproductive instincts which at one point fortified us for self-preservation. i mean, i guess what im realizing here is that the political world we have today isnt the way that it is by chance or by some one-time historical mistake we can fix. its from the unavoidable resin which leaks from our natures as human beings into civilization. the world isnt full of Ghandies. its full of animals reacting to stimuli. we actually tried to fix ourselves through religion, and interestingly, i now see function there. it seems as though at some point humans recognized they were fatally flawed, locked into paradox, and doomed. the only chance for advancement was to try intellectually overruling our evolutionarily strong win-at-all-cost animal natures. this is why certain behaviors became socially accepted as bad... but the fact that these behaviors continued illustrates that although considered bad, they could not be considered unnatural. but we fucked that all up anyway and ended up killing each other. the animal in us won. i feel like im part of an insect colony sometimes. i feel like some advanced alien civilization is probably making secret documentary films for their alien discovery channel. Humans: Cycle of Self-Defeat Airing Next Tuesday At 8. (May Be Unsuitable for Aliens Under 2000 Years Old.) Hey Zorch, were watching another History of Humans video in anthro today! Remember when Gonkle sklomped his implaff during the last one? Just smelling it almost made me sklomp too! That was totally cool! It landed on Wrowlys kweep! no, young aliens. its totally, definitely, not cool. (sorry about the kweep, Wrowly.)jp - Tue 04 Jun 2002 13:57:51
word. I hope we're entertaining someone/thing. cause it's getting old down here. off to the land of giant robots this sunday. I'll let y'all know what earth looks like from the future.