NEOAVATARA

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-nXT8lSnPQ

On June 4th, 1989, before the fall of the Berlin Wall or the Iron Curtain, hope sprung eternal in Beijing.

Thousands of people, primarily young college students, congregated in the central area of the heart of the Chinese capital, to protest Chinese Communist oppression.

It all started with one death.  Hu Yaobang, an anticorruption offiicial who had died and whom protesters wanted to mourn.  By the eve of Hu’s funeral, 1,000,000 people had gathered on the Tiananmen square. In the beginning, there was no unified cause; the protesters just knew that they were there for a honorable reason.  The demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which remained peaceful throughout the protests.

The protests lasted 7 weeks, during which time the Communist regime was in chaos.  No one knew what would be the end result, and events spiraled out of control.  Finally, on June 4th, the tanks moved in.

In Beijing, it is estimated that at least 3,000 civilians were killed.  Some intelligence estimates put the figure closer to 10,000.  There are rumors, that exist to this day, that the Chinese Red Cross actually gave an official figure of 2,600, but they deny that figure.  Officially, the Chinese government only admist to 241 deaths, including a few soldiers.

A huge crackdown followed.  CNN, who probably made their name more from this incident than any other, was on the ground.  They were eventually shut down by the Chinese hierarchy…which made the Chinese leadership look just that much worse.

Following the violence, the government conducted widespread arrests to suppress protesters and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the PRC press. Members of the Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were purged, with several high-ranking members placed under house arrest, such as General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. The violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protest caused widespread international condemnation of the PRC government.

Clearly freedom is yet to come to China.  There is severe repression of religious and personal rights, and the communist government fears a reprisal of Tiananmen every day.  However, on the other hand, the Communists are not stupid.  They dramatically opened up the free market, allowing for the current economic boom.  And many younger Chinese neither remember or care about Tiananmen, although this is largely because of the erasure of that part of history from all books and other reading materials.  The lone protest will occur in Hong Kong, where hundreds of thousands of protesters and supporters are expected.  In China, the day will probably pass without almost any notice, except from military and government officials who guard the square with immense force.

But for the rest of us in the free world, let us dedicate a moment to a few thousand simple students and others, who for a few weeks in the spring of 1989, showed us the real cost of freedom.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7ou2-Kv4UA