• What impact do you think the blatant American collusion with Beijing has had on pro-democracy public opinion?
At the moment the focus is still on the
Chinese government, which has been using the Gulf War to cover up its own misdeeds. There were hopes in pressure from the Americans. But partly as a result of the American government's actions over the past year and a half — top level
Beijing, maintenance of contacts with most-favoured nation status — people are reflecting.
• What are the feelings among defence campaign activists concerning the situation in Tibet and in the West of China generally?
The state of emergency there has been lifted. But in reality there is still a state of siege. At the same time the Beijing regime has made approaches to the Dalai
Lama, who is in exile in India, concerning talks.
In 1989, at the Geneva UN Commission on Human Rights, there was some cooperation between the Tibetans and the Chinese democracy people. But it is not so conspicuous at the moment. In Hong
Kong, people want to signal to the Chinese people that they are not isolated, to stop them from becoming demoralized.
There is still a good turn out on the demonstrations - 3,000 came out to protest against these recent trials.
The main aim of the signature campaign is to let people inside China know that they have support outside, so that they do not just hear from Bush or Major or whoever.
International Viewpoint #201 • March 4, 1991 democratic process."
the addresses in the box below.
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 intellecleaders of 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
Or via October Review, GPO Box 10144, Hong Kong. * Wanchai, Hong Kong. Tel and fax: (852) 572-5057.
convicted under the criminal law, makes them criminals rather than political this 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 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 prisoners (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."3
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
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 "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, throuah 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.
he Tiananmen archives are also being built and we how have quite a goc ollection especially of samizdat democracy movement materials from Chin
'...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. Donaions are welcome, Cheques can be drawn payable to Merrill Lynch #626
4254 Name/o TAMUD and mailed to either the Chicago or the Hong Kong
The Hong Kong Organizing Committee of the Tiananmen University of Democracy (Overseas) can be contacted at: 28, Stone Nullah Lane, First floor, 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 Dongfang, 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 of the 1989 progo edited bulletins or placed posters o eijing's "Democracy Wall", have paid bitterly heavy price. People such as We Jingsheng, Wang Xizhe and Xu Wenli are still enduring solitary confinement in prison for expressing their political views science: I as "prisoners of con1. Beijing Youh News, cited in Agence France Press, December 5, 1989.
Much of the information is based on documentat mpiled by Asia Watch, a New York-based hun ights organizatior United Press International, August 15, 199 March 4, 1991 • #201 International Viewpoint
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