Book Excerpts

Remembering the Tiananmen Square Incident | EXCERPT

Vijay Gokhale was a young diplomat serving in Beijing in the summer of 1989 when he witnessed the drama that unfolded in Tiananmen Square. This unique account brings an Indian perspective on an event in China’s history that the Chinese government has been eager to have the world forget. Read an excerpt:

Saturday, 15 April 1989. the day began quietly. winter was just giving way to spring. There were no signs of the impending storm that broke on the seven o’clock evening news bulletin. The death of Hu Yaobang was the leading story. He had suffered a heart attack during a politburo meeting, and had passed away at 7.53 a.m. that morning in hospital. The Party’s official communique recalled his contribution to the ‘liberation struggle’, and in opposing the Gang of Four, as well as his work as the head of the Organization Department, rehabilitating thousands of cadres who had been victimized during the Cultural Revolution. There was no reference to his fall from power.

That evening students began to gather in small groups across campuses in China to discuss the news. The overwhelming sentiment was one of sympathy for one who they felt had been treated unfairly. Wreaths were prepared for laying at the base of the Monument of the People’s Heroes, a stone column in front of the mausoleum of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square. Small groups of students were also seen visiting the square in spontaneous gestures of mourning. The leadership, as is customary, visited Hu’s residence and condoled with the family.

By 18 April, the number of students visiting the square swelled to tens of thousands. Aside from Beijing University, two other universities took a lead – the People’s University (Renmin Daxue) and the Central Nationalities Institute. The base of the Monument to the People’s Heroes was gradually almost entirely covered with paper wreaths, flowers and elegies to Hu, handwritten on paper and pasted to the column. A growing number of ordinary people were reading them. Criticism about the Party began to surface. There were reports of random acts of throwing of bottles or shoes at the public security forces.

In the week ahead the numbers continued to swell despite public warnings by Beijing city authorities. We noticed the appearance of a three-metre-tall portrait of Hu Yaobang in the square. The first sit-ins on the steps of the Great Hall of the People were seen. The broad sentiment remained sombre, one of mourning for Hu Yaobang, but the first calls for dialogue between students and the authorities to address their demands began to be heard. There were indications that the unfinished agenda of the 1986 student protests may be rearing its head.

The students’ demands focussed on four main areas – greater education and job opportunities; the elimination of benefits to the children of cadres; greater responsiveness to the citizens’ needs by the government; and some personal freedoms. Hu became a useful rallying point because he had been more sympathetic than others in 1986. But the Western media started to create the impression that the students were seeking Western-style democracy. The Western media’s initial efforts to define what was happening in the campuses in terms of their own reference points was the beginning of a fundamental misjudgement by Western governments about the nature of the student movement as well as the subsequent actions taken by the Chinese government. Many of them got it wrong from the outset.

On the night of 20 April, a group of students decided to stage a sit-in at the Xinhuamen, which is the ceremonial gate leading to the residences and offices of China’s top leadership.

I recall it raining exceptionally hard that night, which made it difficult for us to visit the place for a first-hand look. We learnt that many students left the area of the Xinhuamen, but a substantial number also began a sit-down into the early hours of 21 April. There are two versions of what transpired next. According to an official version, the students left the police with no choice but to evict them after they tried to ‘storm the gate’, and this eviction was carried out without force, by picking up the students and loading them into buses for the return journey to their hostels. According to the Xinhua News Agency, no student suffered injuries, though the security forces needed hospitalization because some students had thrown bottles and other objects at them. The students’ version, which was the one that the Western media chose to carry, was rather different. They claimed that around 4.30 a.m. they had been surrounded, beaten with belts and kicked by jackboots, their pleas for mercy had been ignored, and they had been evicted forcefully. Student leader Wu’er Kaixi later claimed that about a thousand policemen and soldiers had brutally assaulted them, and several students had been injured. It is difficult to establish the veracity of either account.

To read more, order your copy of Tiananmen Square today!

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