DOCUMENT T HE crackdown of June
1989 THE true extent of the human toll exacted by the Chinese authorities in the course of their systematic crushing of the pro-democracy movement in China since June 4, 1989 may never be fully known. Somewhere near 1000 people, most of them peaceful demonstrators or innocent bystanders, were killed by troops or crushed to death by army vehicles on the night of June 3-4. Many thousands more - variously described by the Beijing regime as "counter-revolutionaries" , "thugs" or "black hands of the rebellion" — were hunted down and arrested in the weeks and months that followed.
The government-controlled media reported, for example, 2,578 arrests of pro-democracy activists in Beijing alone in the 24 days after June 4. Many more were arrested in the capital thereafter. The crackdown in other parts of China was hardly less severe: during the three-day period July 13-15, 1989, over 3,000 people were officially reported to have been arrested in Jiangsu province for their "crimes" of participation in the movement, and similar statistics were declared by other provincial authorities.
Throughout 1990, arrests of those active in the movement - students, workers and intellectuals - continued to take place, and several major figures were secretly brought to trial and heavily sentenced. Typical examples include Ding Xunzhe, an instructor at Shanxi
University's philosophy department, who was tried in July 1990 and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for his pro-democracy activities: and Chen Zhixiang, a teacher at the Guangzhou Seaman's School, who in January 1990 was tried and sentenced to ten years imprisonment merely for having displayed protest posters in Guangzhou after the June 4 Beijing massacre.? The upcoming show trials Just recently, moreover, in late 1990, several dozens of the top student and intellectual leaders of the pro-democracy movement were singled out by the authorities for exemplary punishment as the "sinister masterminds" and "black hands" of the pro-democracy movement, and show trials of these people are scheduled to take place in January and February 1991. Those about to go on trial in Beijing include student leaders Wang Dan and Zhou Yongjun; well-known intellectuals such as Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming, who have been pro-democracy activists for many years, and Liu Xiaobo, an outspoken literary critic; and workers' leader Ren Wanding, a long-standing pro-democracy activist who in 1978 founded China's first ever human rights' organization, and Han Dongfang, leader of the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation.
The Chinese government has for many years claimed, quite falsely, that there are "no political prisoners in China". According to the authorities, since dissidents are
convicted under the criminal law, this convicted mdt a . makes them criminals rather than political prisoners. Overlooked is the fact that the charge on which dissidents in China are generally tried - namely "counterrevolution" — is itself entirely political in nature. The "Disappeared" TO DATE, the government has announced the release of a total of 881 of those detained since the crackdown began in June 1989. The authorities have provided the names of only a handful of these people, however, and the remainder of the announced releases have not been independently verified. Moreover, the releases have been carefully timed by Beijing in order to placate international outrage at the repression and to head off economic sanctions by the West.
Of the thousands more whose arrests the authorities reported after June 4, 1989 (usually without giving names), nothing has since been heard. These people have simply disappeared, it seems, into the vast Chinese prison system, either left to languish in the pre-trial detention centers, at the mercy of police wardens whose routine abuse and torture of criminal suspects is well-documented, or else dispatched to serve lengthy prison terms after summary proceedings whose outcome was predetermined by the political authorities.
CHINA
In June 1990, the Chinese authorities stated that only 355 pro-democracy prisnets (again, no names were given) remained under investigation in Beijing. Clearly, these various statistics simply do not add up, and according to Western diplomats recently interviewed in Beijing, the true numbers of pro-democracy detainees "is probably still in the thousands.":
The Chinese authorities have made Strenuous efforts to conceal the scope of the crackdown, using all their powers of news censorship in the attempt to divert outside criticism. Often little is known of the detainees other than their names, and sometimes where they were arrested; if even this much is made known, however, then at least those concerned will not become the "non-persons" the authorities would clearly prefer them to be. They will not simply be forgotten. Suppression of the workers ALTHOUGH the authorities will shortly put on trial several dozen of the top students and intellectuals who led the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, the majority of those detained since the crackdown have in fact been workers, rather than students and intellectuals. Most of the fatalities on the night of June 3-4, 1989 were of workers and 45 of the 49 announced executions arising from the pro-democracy movement have also been of workers the other four executed were peasants).
Han Dongtang, leader of the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation, has been held in harsh prison conditions and solitary confinement despite a deteriorating medical condition which has required him to be hospitalized six times since his arrest in June 1989. In general, since the June 1989 crackdown, detained workers seem simply to have been excluded from government statements concerning the numbers of imprisoned pro-democracy activists. China's long-term political prisoners THE forerunners of the 1989 pro-democracy activists, those who ten years ago edited bulletins or placed posters on Beijing's "Democracy Wall" , have paid a bitterly heavy price. People such as Wei Jingsheng, Wang Xizhe and Xu Wenli were handed 14-15 year prison terms and are still enduring solitary confinement in prison for expressing their political views at the outset of the Deng Xiaoping era. They have been adopted by Amnesty International as "prisoners of conscience." * 1. Beijing Youth News, cited in Agence France Press, December 5, 1989. Much of the in mation as New York-based huma rights organization. ompiled by Asia watch, i 9 3. United Press International, August 15, 1990. March 4, 1991 • #201 International Viewpoint
The Tiananmen University of Democracy
THE Tiananmen University of University (overseas) (TAMUD) was founded in autumn 1989. According to a statement by the University in January 1991:
"... From January to December 1990, we ran over 50 two month courses which range from ABC on China's social, economic and political problems, the history of democracy movements in contemporary China, the political and social changes in Hong Kong, the transformations of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the examination of theories of feminism, democratic socialism and civil society, to courses on the use of audio-visual aids to document social movements. "Another area of our work is that of organizing discussion groups and symposia. So far, we have organized four symposia on the crisis in China, hegemony and cultural strategies, autocracy in China and people's livelihood in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Over 20 discussion seminars have been held, covering topics such as current ideological trends in China, the Japanese workers movement, the unification of Germany, the Indochina dilemma, the world capitalist system and the prospects for the overseas democracy movement.
"Publication is also an essential means of reaching out and communicating with others. We have our own journal, the Tiananmen Review. We also publish Tiananmen Books. At the moment, we are working on three books, one written by a student leader active in the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement, one a translation of an anthology of essays by Vaclav Havel, and the third a translation of an anthology of essays by Soviet Marxist dissident Boris Kagarlitsky.
We hope these books will find their way into China....
"Joint activities with other groups are not confined to Hong Kong. In opposition to the expansion of Japanese militarism in trying to put through the United Nations Peace and Cooperation Bill in the Japanese Diet so as to allow for Japanese troops to be sent to the Middle East, Japan's independent organizations, the Pacific Area Resource Centre, through ARENA, invited local groups in Hong Kong to join in a signature campaign against the Japanese government's action. The Tiananmen University of Democracy took part in the coordination of the signature campaign in Hong Kong.
"The Tiananmen archives are also being built and we how have quite a good collection especially of samizdat democracy movement materials from China since 1949.
...the Foundation has as its principle non-affiliation to any political parties or groups. We welcome exchange and interflow with all individuals and groups with genuine inclination towards democracy and peace." The permanent address of TAMUD Foundation is:
TAMUD Foundation, PO Box, 166121, Chicago IL 60616-6121, USA. Donations are welcome, Cheques can be drawn payable to Merrill Lynch #626-
04254 Name/o TAMUD and mailed to either the Chicago or the Hong Kong address. The Hong Kong Organizing Committee of the Tiananmen University of Democracy (Overseas) can be contacted at: 28, Stone Nullah Lane, First floor,
Wanchai, Hong Kong. Tel and fax: (852) 572-5057. Or via October Review, GPO Box 10144, Hong Kong. *