Former Tiananmen student: "History is on our side"
According to Wang Dan, "inevitable" political reforms waiting for China will vindicate the movement of 4 June. Today, the 16th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen square, some 50,000 people are expected for the annual candlelight vigil in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong (AsiaNews/Scmp) Another voice has joined the chorus of criticism leveled at Peking for accusing Japan of historical amnesia while refusing to admit to its own serious wrongdoings as it systematically erases the massacre in Tiananmen Square. The voice is that of Wang Dan, among the leaders of the pro-democracy movement of 4 June. At the time of the repression of the movement itself in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989 today is the anniversary Wang was an undergraduate at the University of Peking.
"It is certainly infuriating that Japan has refused to admit the atrocities committed during the war," said Wang. "But it is the Chinese citizens and not the government who have the right to be angry: there is not a single line in history books in China about 4 June and the cultural Revolution. The government is doing just what Japan is doing."
On 28 May, the group of "Mothers of Tiananmen", made up of 125 relatives of victims of the tragedy of 16 years ago, wrote an open letter addressed to Chinese president Hu Jintao. In the letter, they advise the communist regime to "ask pardon before history", accusing it of being "more clever than elements of the Japanese right which tried to erase the massacre of Nanking from history."
Today in Hong Kong, a message taped by Ding Zilin, who leads the group of mothers, will be broadcast. The woman lost her 17-year-old son in Tiananmen.
Tonight, in Victoria Park in Hong Kong, a candlelight procession will be held in remembrance of the victims of the massacre; organizers are expecting around 40,000 and 50,000 people to take part, around the same number as last year.
Wang, now living in exile and studying for a doctorate in history at Harvard University in the United States, said the significance of the Tiananmen crackdown would not fade because history would always do justice to the wronged. "The history books have told us that none of the unjust incidents have been abandoned by history," he said. "Even the most unfair thing will be vindicated one day."
He also believed that "inevitable" political reforms on the mainland in the next five to 10 years would vindicate the June 4 movement. "Most of the transformations we saw in the past decade were economic ones. If there is no corresponding reform on the political side, a lot of social problems will arise," he said, citing rampant official corruption and social injustice as two of the major problems that could spark social instability.
Mr Wang, who is in Taiwan researching his thesis - a comparative study of mainland and Taiwanese politics in the 1950s - said a civil society was emerging in China. "It's very encouraging when we see people such as lawyers and journalists coming out to fight for social justice. It's China's hope."
Mr Wang was arrested and sentenced twice, in 1989 and 1995, for conspiring to overthrow the Communist Party. He spent seven years in a Liaoning prison and was exiled in 1998 on medical parole. He will give a talk on the mainland's democracy movement tonight at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy in Taipei in commemoration of the June
On 4 June 1989 in Tiananmen Square, troops of the national army backed by armored tanks massacred defenseless protesters who for more than a month had taken to the streets of the Chinese capital to call for democracy and an end to corruption for Chinese society. The death toll of the massacre was never published by the government, but independent international organizations say thousands of people were killed in the square and side streets in the days following 4 June.
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