Selections
from the
left
• While Gorbachev took a Pontius Pilate attitude to the massacre in Tiananmen and the repression that followed it, Boris Yeltsin declared: "What is going on in China is a criminal act against the people.....it is a crime against the country's own citizens, just like Tbilisi." The former chief of the Moscow Communist Party, along with various opposition personalities, also called for a demonstration, which brought 15,000 people into the streets of Moscow on June 9.
• The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, firmly condemned the bloodbath in Beijing... "You cannot apply a double standard in these cases of violence. They have to be condemned, regardless of the political system or the country concerned. We cannot applaud the violence in China, just as we cannot applaud the violence in Venezuela."
• In Peru, the Mariateguist Unity Party (PUM) also condemned the massacre and declared its support for the Chinese students.
• The Brazilian Workers' Party (PT)
CHINA condemned the repression as contrary to socialism. It broke all ties with the Chinese CP, led a demonstration against the repression in China and dedicated its congress beginning on June 16 to the Chinese students.
• Protest demonstrations brought out several thousand people in Poland and in Hungary, as well as in various European capitals. In East Germany, a demonstration in support of the Chinese students was dispersed.
• The French Communist Party condemned the repression in startlingly strong terms, which were probably not unconnected to the fear of the effect it might have on its showing in the then upcoming European elections. The Political Bureau statement sounded almost "Trotskyist":
"These events are not a condemnation of socialism and communist ideas. They are the contrary. Socialism is not authoritarian methods, the power of a caste, a leader cult, arbitrariness and resort to force, bureaucracy, privileges and corruption, social inequalities, incompetence or irresponsibility. These features are the survivals in a society of the evils of capitalism or feudalism, of conceptions
"For this reason, the French Communist Party has long striven to extirpate from its policy and practice, from its rules of life, the Stalinist conceptions that marked it for a whole
• The strongest statement of support for the Chinese authorities seems to have come from the East German parliament, which declared: "The deputies of the People's House state that in the present situation the political solution of internal problems determinedly sought by the party and state leadership of the People's Republic of China has been obstructed by the bloody excesses of anti-constitutional elements. As a result of this, the People's Power was forced to send the armed forces in to restore order. Lamentably, this led to many people being injured and even to some being killed."
• Finally, while in Norway one of the last big parties of Maoist origin broke with Beijing (see /V 166), another surviving Maoist formation - the Labor Party of Belgium — decided to support the Chinese party against "the rise of counter-revolution," even though it rejected the "disproportionate military means" used by its Chinese 5 comrades.* July 10, 1989 • #167 International Viewpoint