Tiananmen, 15 Years OnWhere Are Some of the “Most Wanted” Participants Today?What makes it so difficult to forget the events of June 3-4, 1989? That night, the Chinese government turned its troops and tanks against its own citizens, slaughtering hundreds to stop a coalition of students, a handful of workers, and a few academics, writers, and journalists from seeking more control over their own lives and for a pluralistic political system. Pressure for far-reaching reform had been building for years and there was a real sense that Chinese history might again take a dramatic turn should the students succeed. Instead, hundreds of civilians, massed in the streets of Beijing to stop the army from reaching Tiananmen Square, lost their lives. In the Square, the students waited and negotiated. Would they be allowed to leave alive? Did they prefer martyrdom? What message did they want to send the waiting world?
Beginning on June 12, 1989, the Chinese government issued “wanted lists.” Human Rights Watch has copies of three: [LINKS?] “Wanted List 1: The 21 Beijing Student Leaders,” “Wanted List 2: Three Workers Leaders,” and a “Ministry of Public Security Compilation No. 2” in which sixty-two people are listed. We asked a sampling of people from the lists to tell us about their involvement in what has come to be known as the “pro-democracy movement,” the immediate aftermath of the crackdown, their lives subsequent to June 4, 1989, and their assessment of what June 4, 1989 meant to them and what they believe it has meant and will continue to mean for the future of China. We believe the stories taken together tell a story that speaks to the indomitability of the human spirit and to what a few can accomplish if they stand together and do not forget. Human Rights Watch salutes all those who on June 4 stood up to assert their rights. On their behalf we urge China to overturn the official verdict, to allow for a full and public account of the events leading to the crackdown, and to end impunity for those responsible. Beijing should launch a full investigation by an impartial body to uncover what happened in Beijing and in all other cities where there were crackdowns on pro-democracy protestors in 1989. It is equally urgent that the Chinese government make known the names of all those dead and injured during the crackdowns. Feng Congde “Tiananmen was the beginning of the end of the communist camp. It was a wake-up call to Chinese inside and outside China. There were two goals, a free market system and a democratic political system. The market system had to be speeded up or China would have exploded. And although people don’t speak out, they are building a bigger democratic base. Democracy and human rights have become not just a new concept, but a real and common value.” —May 2004 Feng Congde became active in the pro-democracy movement on April 15, 1989, the day former premier Hu Yaobang died. Mourning students, who considered the ousted liberal Chinese Communist Party general secretary a hero, were quick to use his death to push their demands. At the time, Feng was a third-year graduate student at the Beijing University Remote Sensing Institute working on his thesis, “Expert System on Satellite Image Processing.” His scholarship to Boston University’s PhD program already in hand, Feng had expected to defend his thesis on June 12, the same day his name appeared on “Wanted List 1: The 21 Beijing Student Leaders.” In Tiananmen Square where the students massed, Feng first assumed the post of president of the Student Union of Beijing Universities, and later became one of three deputy commanders of student headquarters. Feng described the scene in Tiananmen Square the early morning of June 4, 1989, when it became clear that the government was about to crack down. Some 3,000 to 5,000 students were massed around the Monument to the People’s Heroes, “the center of the center,” he called it. “It was 4:30 in the morning, two to three hours before dawn. The lights had been turned off. It was a dangerous, nervous urgent time.” Feng explained that it was his duty to help the students to a unified decision––stay or leave the Square. Obviously the only possibility was a voice vote. Yes, we stay and maybe die, or we leave. At the same time as the students were deciding their own fate, four intellectuals were negotiating with the army. “They could advise us,” Feng said, “but they could not decide for us.” Feng said the student vote sounded about even to him, but based on what he heard and his own analysis of the vote, he made the decision to leave. To this day, he said, “I feel guilty about those workers and civilians who died for us, but I felt that if the students lived they could be seeds for the future.” The students filed out of the Square in orderly fashion through a narrow pathway between two lines of soldiers. Before they had gone very far, several tanks rushed toward the middle of the student line and the first tear gas bombs went off. It was 6:20 a.m. At least two students were killed and several wounded. According to Feng, “There was no way to keep order.” Feng and several others rushed ahead to see what the danger might be. The street was eerily empty, he said, until he came to what he called “a scene of hatred,” four soldiers lying dead in the street. When he tried to help, some thirty civilians rushed in seemingly from no place, threatening to beat him if he dared to remove the bodies or help in any way. As he understood it, “These soldiers had orders to kill, but they were victims, too.” Feng explained that if it hadn’t been for a group of 100 qi gong practitioners, including policemen, high government officials, and ordinary workers, whom they happened to meet as they fled, he and his then wife Chai Ling would never have been able to survive ten months in hiding followed by escape. As a result of that experience Feng re-thought his interests. He has just completed his dissertation in the religious science department at the Sorbonne. It is entitled “Chinese Medical Cosmology According to the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon.” He earns his living through computer-related work. Xiong Yan “We believe, no matter whether the government does or does not, that history will recognize this movement as a patriotic and democratic movement…. The people want to see whether the government is really a people’s government or not.” —May 1989 Xiong Yan, a political science major and post-graduate law student at Beijing University spent nineteen months in detention for Tiananmen-related activities. Stripped of his academic credentials and unsuccessful in attempts to find work, he fled China in June 1992. Living in exile in the United States, Xiong earned a series of academic degrees in English literature, criminal justice, and religious studies. He served two years, 1994-96, in the U.S. army before immersing himself in a divinity school doctoral program. Those studies are now on hold: Xiong is back in the army serving as a chaplain in Iraq. Liu Gang “We almost changed China. From the time of Tiananmen, people had more confidence that the system could be changed. Before then, they thought the Party was too stable, too powerful. They didn’t even want to try to change it. We didn’t fail—failure is the mother of success. There’ll be more chances—and we have more experience.” —May 2004 Liu Gang’s political activism began in the mid-1980’s when he began to espouse the need for free expression, political pluralism, and human rights. By 1988, he was involved in setting up “democracy salons” on university campuses to more openly discuss such ideas. During April and May 1989, Liu, a graduate physics student, helped coordinate the various Beijing university responses to unfolding events. After June 4, Liu managed two weeks of freedom before he was captured trying to buy a railway ticket in Baoding, Hebei province. His ongoing activism earned him one of the longer student sentences, six years of imprisonment on charges of “conspiracy to subvert the government.” His association with the think tank SERI and its directors, and with Fang Lizhi and Li Shuxian were cited as evidence against him. True to form, Liu defended himself at length. Liu served out his entire sentence, most of it in Lingyuan prison where he was expected to undergo reeducation examination every day. His failure to do so and his ability to rally other political prisoners, resulted in a three-month stint in solitary confinement and intermittent torture. Shortly before his release, Liu was transferred to a prison near home where he learned the thirteen restrictions that would apply once he was “freed.” He also learned that his relatives would be required to observe six restrictions. For example, he could not travel, contact any relatives, or start his own business. Each week when he reported to the police he was required to submit a “thought report.” Liu escaped to the U.S. in April 1996 and almost immediately enrolled at Columbia University, where he earned a Masters degree in computer science. He has worked as a mathematics researcher for such institutions as ATT and Bell Labs. Zhang Zhiqing Zhang Zhiqing, No. 16 on “Wanted List 1,” disappeared from view shortly after June 4, 1989. It is known that he was arrested in1991 but no details about the exact date or circumstances of his detention or place of imprisonment ever came to light. None of the other students on the most wanted list has heard from him in the intervening years. Li Lu In late April 1989 Li Lu traveled from Nanjing to Tiananmen Square to join the student movement. As he explained it, “once in the Square you did anything and everything that needed doing.” Li served as an organizer for the mid-May student hunger strike; later he functioned as deputy commander-in-chief in the Square. After escaping to France, Li traveled to the U.S. in late 1989. In record-setting time, Li managed to graduate from Columbia University in New York City in May 1996 with three degrees, a BA in economics, an MBA, and a JD. Today, he owns his own investment firm. Wang Chaohua “I jumped into the center of the movement. I thought I could make a decision for myself, for me as an individual. But this seemingly personal decision had repercussions for others, including ones I love dearly.” —May 26, 2004 Wang was a thirty-seven-year-old graduate student in Chinese literature at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences when the protests began, older than most of the student leaders by more than a decade. She acknowledged that her age gave her a different perspective, in part because she had lived through the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). “Students in ’89 didn’t have the backing of the central government,” she said. As a result, there was a greater sense of uncertainty and a greater sense of risk. There was also a greater sense of self-liberation.” Wang’s participation in the central student committee was a matter of chance. “When the movement broke out, I went to the Square to see the students. They were calling for volunteers from each school. I was with some of my friends. I said, if none of you want to go, I’ll go and report back.” That decision landed her on the “21 Most Wanted Beijing Student Leaders list” and six months in hiding before she could make her way to the U.S. As a doctoral student at UCLA, Wang researched and analyzed contemporary Chinese intellectualism. Today she is a California-based freelance writer. Zheng Xuguang Zheng Xuguang , an engineering student at the Beijing Aeronautics Academy at the time of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, remains in China. He had tried to escape following June 4, but was picked up in July and sentenced in 1991 to a two-year prison term for counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement. While struggling to make a living, Zheng continued his political activism. In 1993, he was held for ten months after he signed the “Peace Charter,” a document calling for human rights, political pluralism, and freedom for political prisoners. The following year, he signed a petition addressed to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress calling for reversing the verdict that labeled the movement a “counterrevolutionary rebellion.” The document read in part, “The movement was a nationwide, popular, patriotic movement with young students as its main body. Within the movement we consistently adhered to the principles of peace, reason and nonviolence.” In 1995, Zheng was again briefly taken into custody after signing still another petition, this one calling for the government to release newly detained activists. Zhang Ming When the pro-democracy started in April 1989, Zhang Ming, a Jilin province native, was an automotive engineering student at Qinghua University in Beijing. During the ensuing two months, he became a key figure in the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation based in Tiananmen Square. Zhang’s attempt to escape to Hong Kong ended in September 1989 when he was caught in Shenzhen and returned to Beijing for trial. Accused of inciting subversion and attempting to overthrow the socialist system, Zhang was sentenced in January 1991 to a three-year term on charges of counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement and transferred nearer home to Lingyuan prison in Liaoning province where according to confidential sources, he was tortured. Following his release in the spring of 1992, Zhang went into business with friends, eventually becoming president of his own successful Shanghai-based company. In September 2002, authorities re-arrested Zhang on charges of “endangering public safety” for allegedly plotting to destroy a multi-story building in the city. By the time he received a seven-year sentence in 2003, the charges had been changed to “abuse of executive benefits.” In May 2004, it became known that the China’s Supreme People’s Court had ordered the Shanghai Supreme Court to re-hear Zhang’s case. Zhang Boli “1989 stands out as a beautiful moment. We stood up. It wasn’t easy. Overturning the government’s official verdict isn’t important; what’s important is what we did. History will judge us properly.” —June 2, 2004 Zhang Boli, twenty-nine years old in 1989, knew that he would be severely punished should he ever be caught, in part because he was the only Communist Party member among the students, and in part because of his many activities in Tiananmen Square. First and foremost, as one of three deputy commanders, he joined deputy Feng Congde and commander Chai Ling in leading the June 4 retreat the Square. He also functioned as deputy director of the Hunger Strike Brigade and as head of its propaganda department, as head of the consultative department of Bejing University’s Autonomous Student Federation, and as the chief architect of the Tiananmen Democracy University. It took Zhang until June 1991 to make good his escape from China. He had spent most of the previous two years in hiding, first as a migrant laborer in Heilongjiang, his home province, and then as a self-employed farmer. Once in the U.S., Zhang, still suffering from severe kidney problems exacerbated by his time in the Square and in hiding, joined Princeton University for a year as a visiting scholar. But his persistent medical problems prevented him from furthering his goals until 1995 when he began Christian missionary studies and full-time missionary work. Zhang, now a pastor in Fairfax, Virginia, runs community activities for Chinese students and scholars in the Washington, D.C. area. Wang Juntao “Tiananmen changed Chinese history. It was a benchmark in Chinese political development, furthering the liberal trend of the 1980s and destroying the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.” —May 2004 Wang Juntao, accused by the Chinese government of being one of the “black hands behind the black hands” was sentenced to a thirteen-year prison term on February 12, 1991. The charges against him included manipulating the Tiananmen protestors in an abortive attempt to overthrow the government. He spent four months on the run before being caught. At the time of the pro-democracy movement, Wang was working at the Beijing Social and Economic Sciences Research Institute (SERI), China’s first independent think-tank. As one of its co-founders, he served as deputy editor of Jingjixue Zhoubao (Economics Weekly), the institute’s newspaper, and was engaged in several research projects. On April 23, 1994, ill with hepatitis, Wang was exiled to the U.S. He spent a year at Harvard’s Fairbanks Center as a visiting scholar, followed by a year as a Neiman fellow, also at Harvard, and a third year as a Mason fellow at the Kennedy School. After graduation in 1997 with a Masters in Public Administration, Wang enrolled at Columbia University, earning a masters degree in political science in 2000, followed by the start of work on his dissertation, tentatively entitled “The Rise of Neo-conservatism in China in the 1990s.” Wang first became involved in dissident politics at the end of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in 1976 when he protested against the “gang of four,” responsible for furthering many of the excesses of the period. He was all of sixteen years old at the time. In 1978-81, then a physics major at Beijing University, Wang helped further the Democracy Wall movement. Ma Shaofang Ma Shaofang, the former Beijing Film Academy student who was No. 10 on the most wanted student list, has remained politically active in China, despite his struggle to earn a living and constant harassment from security personnel. He has been warned repeatedly that he will face severe consequences if he continues to write and speak openly in favor of political pluralism and human rights. In 1998, Ma was one of two former student leaders who wrote an open letter to Chinese authorities asking for the release of Wang Youcai, who had been detained for forming the opposition China Democracy Party. He signed petitions in February and March 1995 arguing for the abolishment of reeducation through labor (laojiao) camps and protesting the state of human rights in China. In 1994, Ma protested police harassment of Wang Dan, and called for the release of political prisoners and compensation for June 4 victims. That same year he explored the possibility of opening a business in Shenzhen, but found that former dissidents had trouble securing bank loans. Today, Ma, who has had a series of short-lived jobs, works as a marketing consultant. Yang Youcai “When I arrived in Beijing in 1987, my main interest was still physics. I thought that academia would be my future. The tragedy of 1989 made me decide to work for democracy in China.” —May 2004 “The development of a democratic system is crucially important. Democracy is the only way to avoid a second Tiananmen.” —May 2004 When the events that culminated on June 4, 1989 began, Wang Youcai, a twenty-four year-old graduate student in physics at Beijing University, was already committed to political reform. His interest had been aroused when still an undergraduate as he listened to physicist Fang Lizhi speak out about the need for democracy. Wang held a number of different positions in the student movement during the weeks of protests leading up to June 4, including that of general secretary of the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation. Although he wasn’t in Tiananmen Square when the end came, he immediately began to document what was happening, so as to rebut with firsthand information what he believed would be an inevitable government cover up. Knowing he would be hunted, Wang fled Beijing, but as he said about himself, “I was just an inexperienced student, so I went home.” Security forces detained him on August 19, 1989 and took him back to Beijing, where he was sentenced to a four-year term for “inciting subversion against the people’s government and the [attempt at] overthrowing the socialist system during the 1989 turmoil and rebellion.” Wang was released early for allegedly “showing repentance.” He attributes the release to international pressure during the visit of then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker to Beijing. The continuance of pro-democracy work brought Wang endless government harassment. He was repeatedly monitored, called in for questioning, and threatened by members of the Public Security Bureau. The government finally clamped down in 1997 when he and some friends formed the China Democracy Party, the first genuine opposition political party since the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Wang was detained in August 1998, released, then rearrested in November. In December 1998, he was sentenced to an eleven-year term on charges of subversion. Released in May 2004 and exiled to the U.S. on medical parole, Wang is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center. Yang Tao Yang Tao, once head of Beijing University’s Autonomous Student Federation, remains in China. Although he was never tried or sentenced in connection with the 1989 pro-democracy movement, the former history major at Beijing University was held for thirteen months, expelled from school, barred from entering another university, and banished to his hometown, Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province. Authorities charged Yang had been an instigator of a “counterrevolutionary rebellion,” had “advocated bourgeois liberalism,” and “wantonly attacked Marxism.” In 1998, along with another 1989 activist, Yang petitioned government officials to release Wang Youcai, held at the time for his involvement in the China Democracy Party. In 1999, during tenth anniversary preparations to commemorate June 4, Yang lobbied for reversal of the government’s decision to label the pro-democracy movement a counterrevolutionary rebellion. He was arrested, originally on charges of “incitement to overthrow state political power.” By the time of his trial, he was charged with tax evasion and sentenced to a four-year prison term. Yang, too has had trouble earning a living. Han Dongfang “1989 was the very first time the Chinese people themselves directly faced the regime. Before that time, there was only hope. June 4 put a big question mark on the legitimacy of the Party. The people lost trust and they lost hope. My dream broke that day. It was the turning point of my whole life.” —May 2004 Han Dongfang, a twenty-six year-old railway worker, first became involved in the pro-democracy movement on April 15, 1989, the day Hu Yaobang died. But it was not until May 20, when he joined the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation (BWAF) one day after it was formed, that he found his niche. The BWAF, the first independent union since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, grew to some 200 members before it was banned on June 4. Han’s emergence as its leader earned him the top spot on the list of wanted worker leaders. After the massacre in Beijing on June 4, Han took off on his bicycle on what he expected to be a one- or two-year cross country trip designed to help him learn more about working conditions in China. It was not to be. On June 19, Han found out much to his surprise that he was wanted and turned himself in to the police. Han was never tried or sentenced, but at the end of April 1991, after he contracted drug-resistant tuberculosis, he was permitted to return home. Seventeen months later, when it was clear his health was not improving, he was permitted to travel to the U.S. for treatment. He made it clear to Chinese authorities that he would stay away no more than one year. True to his promise, Han returned to China in August 1993, only to immediately be forcibly ejected for “opposing and attacking China, betraying it and his Chinese citizenship, undermining the interests of the country and harming its international prestige.” Han was able to settle in Hong Kong where in 1994 he formed the influential China Labor Bulletin to promote independent trade unionism in China. His call in talk-show on Radio Free Asia is one of the network’s most popular programs. Lu Jinghua “Tiananmen 100 percent changed my life. Even since ’89, I’ve tried to make people understand what life without human rights is really all about.” —May 24, 2004 Lu Jinghua was twenty-eight years old, married with a small child, and selling clothing from a stall in Beijing when she wandered down to Tiananmen Square on May 24, 1989. There she spotted the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation banner. It didn’t take her long to get up to speed on the issues, and for the next eleven days she was the voice of the workers in the Square. Ten days after her name appeared on an August 19 wanted list of “major criminals who have not yet been caught,” Lu was out of hiding and safe in Hong Kong. She came to the U.S. on December 8, 1989, an exile from her homeland. For six years Lu worked as an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. In 1996, she switched to computer work; today she sells real estate. Zheng Yi Zheng Yi, an award winning novelist and essayist from Shanxi province, happened to arrive in Beijing for a literary conference on April 15, 1989, the day that Hu Yaobang died. Zheng worked with other intellectuals to craft statements of support for the students including the famous “Declaration of May 16.” That document, referring to Deng Xiaoping as a “senile and fatuous autocrat,” featured a stinging critique of corrupt central leadership. Zheng also acted as an advisor to the students, but was not in Beijing when the crackdown began, having gone home for a change of clothes and some cash. Within days of June 4, Zheng was on the run, spending the next three years moving from place to place to escape arrest. But he never stopped writing. Red Memorial is an account of the ways the Communist Party rewarded violence and even cannibalism during the Cultural Revolution. A Part of History, also about the Cultural Revolution, is an autobiographical work. Zheng talks about the books as the story of “someone who was brainwashed by the Communist Party, someone who sat through a Marxist education, but ended up criticizing Marxism and the Party.” Zheng left China in March 1992. He continues to write on the problems facing contemporary China from his home near Washington, D.C. His books are banned in China. Zhou Fengsuo “For our generation, it was the biggest event. I feel lucky to have been a part. It was the one time I experienced the beautiful character of the Chinese people longing for a democratic China where we could freely speak our minds. We believed we could get there. Later I experienced the worst of human nature. People died.” —May 2004 Zhou Fengsuo, a physics major at Qinghua University and a member of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Students Autonomous Union, was never tried or sentenced. Instead he was released with ninety-six others after a year in prison, an event he attributes to China’s desire to continue to enjoy Most Favored Nation trading status with the U.S., then up for renewal. However, instead of being allowed to return home, the government sent Zhou to Yangyuan, a poor and isolated rural county in Hebei province, to be reeducated. From his release in 1991 until 1994, amid constant monitoring and police harassment, sometimes with friends whose experiences had been similar to his own, he struggled to earn a living, as an engineer, in futures trading, and in his own company. For want of a passport, he could not accept a scholarship to study physics at a U.S. university. When he finally was allowed to leave China, he became active with the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars, and attended business school at the University of Chicago from 1996 to 1998. Today, Zhou is a California-based financial analyst. Fang Lizhi “June 4, 1989 was one of the most important events of the last century.” —May 2004 In September 1989, the Ministry of Public Security issued “Compilation No. 2,” a list of major criminals who had not yet been caught. Fang Lizhi, once a physics professor at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, Anhui province, already purged from the Party and fired from his post, headed the list. His wife Li Shuxian, was No. 2. Even before 1989, Fang’s outspoken political activism going back to his early student days, his determination to foster “intellectual and academic freedom,” his concern for human rights, and his influence among students had made government officials wary. In February 1989, security personnel went so far as to corner Fang and his wife on a Beijing street to prevent them from attending an official dinner hosted by then U.S. President George Bush. Fang did not appear in the Square during the pro-democracy movement, but on June 6, 1989, he and Li sought asylum in the U.S. embassy in Beijing where they remained until they left for the U.K. a year later. Another half year passed before Fang accepted a teaching and research position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. Professor Fang now teaches in the physics department at the University of Arizona. Yan Jiaqi By the time the 1989 protests came to a head, Yan Jiaqi had years of experience in reform politics, working both inside and outside the system. In 1976, for example, he took part in demonstrations that followed the death of Premier Zhou Enlai, and in 1978 he published an essay in one of the Democracy Wall samizdat magazines. In the early 1980s, Yan switched from philosophy to political science. In 1985, he was named the first head of the Institute of Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). One Western academic dubbed him “China’s first political scientist.” Yan’s response to the events of spring 1989 was swift. He organized protests over the closing of the reformist World Economic Herald in Shanghai, and signed on to public letters criticizing the government’s handling of the student protests. After his attempts to convince China’s leaders to take a softer line failed, Yan took his place with the students. On the night of June 3, he was in the Square for the opening ceremony of the newly-founded “democracy university,” an institution created by student protestors and headed by student leader Zhang Boli. Yan was named honorary president. “It was already very late,” Yan recalled. “It was probably around 10 p.m. Shots had already been fired, but we couldn’t yet hear them in the Square… I went home to bed. I was awakened at one or two in the morning by the sound of gunfire. At the time, I lived behind CASS, not far from Jianguomen. I could see what was going on [in the streets below] very clearly. The sound of gunfire was very loud.” For Yan, the government’s decision to use force meant the die had been cast. “A few people came to my house that morning and said that many people had been killed in Tiananmen Square. I decided to leave Beijing.” Yan made it to Hong Kong on June 22, 1989, then on to France, and some five years later to the U.S. From his home in Brooklyn, New York, he writes regularly for Chinese-language publications in the U.S., Japan, Europe, and Hong Kong, and continues to push for democratic reform in China. |  |
 Chinese dissident Wang Dan addresses fellow students during a demonstration in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in May 1989. The Chinese characters on his headband read "Hunger Strike" (AP Photo). “Most Wanted”  From the Archives |
|||||||
