Chinese workers had begun to organize
LEE CHEUK YAN, a representative of a radical Christian workers' organization in Hong Kong, was in Tiananmen Square on the night of the massacre. He had brought a large sum of money collected for the students by the solidarity movement, which was confiscated by the police, and he was jailed for three days.
keep the workers from coming to support the students. • It is clear that in the beginning the police went after the workers in particular.
It was announced that activists of the independent workers' unions were arrested in at least five cities, the main industrial cities. So, in a very short time the movement had spread to several cities. The [Beijing] activists told me that the workers had come from other cities to meet them. A national network was beginning to form. This demonstrates quite clearly the general discontent with the party and the desire of the workers to have organizations of their own. • What is the situation of workers in Hong Kong?
Hong Kong workers are the victims of an ultra-free-enterprise economy We do not have social security or medical insurance. If there is any accident, the workers are on their own. Wages are very uncertain. A lot of working people, in particular industrial workers, are paid by the day or by the job. No work, no wages! If the level of activity drops off, workers are not
Workers have no voice. The Hong
Lee had close contacts in particular dent federation, whose leaders are all
On the other hand, they never said "Down with the Communist Party," they only wanted to reform the party, to have the right to organize freely, to be able to have a check over the party, to end corruption. In the beginning, the party spokespeople said that they agreed with these demands.
However the party could not allow all its vices to be exposed before the Chinese people. The party could not have its role as ruler be challenged by the ranks. As long as the questions are raised by the top echelons, there is no problem. But if the ranks question decisions, demand democracy, challenge the leadership, then all opposition has to be crushed. • The Workers' Union was just getting started?
Yes, it was not yet a big organization in Beijing. They came out spontaneously to support the students. First, they protected the students, surrounding them with lines of stewards. Then, they announced that they were forming the Independent Union of Beijing Workers. Their official declaration dates from mid-May. They existed for only two or three weeks.
What they told me about their demands shows a similarity with those of the students - against the corruption of the bureaucrats, for real involvement in the decisions in the plants. They had already 28 traderships are in were es. i think drawn up statutes; they were setting up a International Viewpoint #167 • July 10, 1989 with activists trying to form an independent union movement in China. He described this activity in an interview given in the British colony to our special correspondent, Laurent Carasso.
they had about a hundred members. They had intended to do a tour of the factories to explain to the workers why they needed to organize, to educate themselves politically and to register officially and demand legal rights for the union. At the same time, they were very courageous. They said that if only one of them was left at the end of the fight, that person would keep the flag of the independent union flying.
• Did they have the time to organize in the factories?
They were mainly in Tiananmen, but they had support in several factories that they wanted to organize.
It is very significant that two days before the massacre, the Beijing papers reported that 40 factories had denounced the Beijing Independent Workers' Union as illegal. If 40 factories took the union seriously, it is because it had sympathizers in at least 40. And one of these factories was very big, the Beijing steelworks, with 220,000 workers. This plant is as symbolic for the Chinese workers as the Gdansk shipyards in Poland. I heard that the army surrounded the steelworks to
Kong government is not elected. It is a council of representatives of different social and professional organizations. The unions have two seats on this council. That means that in Hong Kong, the working people do not even have the right to vote. So, when you criticize the lack of democracy in China, you have also to criticize the British government that denies elementary democratic rights to the working people