This is one the official guides to the Olympics won’t be handing out, but it is vital to understanding the true context of the spectacle we are about to witness in Beijing. Created and circulated by people who have kept faith with the Chinese democracy movement:
showing street locations in Beijing where on June 4, 1989, 150 of the demonstrators were killed, or the hospitals where their bodies were taken. As the text accompanying the map explains, the total number killed “remains unknown although estimates range from several hundred to several thousand.” The information for this map was gathered by a group called the Tiananmen Mothers, started by Ding Zilin, a mother of one of the victims.
Nineteen years have passed, but as one of the eye-witnesses in the Beijing streets and in Tiananmen Square itself to that night of June 3-4, 1989, I look at this map and in memory can still hear the first cracks of the bullets, feel the treads of armored personnel carriers shaking the pavement, and see the people looking grimly at the advancing rows of helmets, silhouetted against the burning roadblocks. They were clutching bricks and bottles against the guns of their own country’s army. I remember a young man I saw closeup, shot in the chest, one of seven with bullet wounds I saw carried to a makeshift medical tent at the north end of Tiananmen Square during the final hours — and wonder if any of them are named in this document. I remember the demonstrators sitting in the spring breeze, shortly before dawn, on the steps of the monument to China’s Revolutionary Heroes, surrounded on three sides by tens of thousands of soldiers in the final standoff in Tiananmen Square — and facing off against the huge portrait of Mao, the white Goddess of Liberty statue that stood in Tiananmen for less than a week before China’s rulers knocked it down.
Here’s the account I filed that June 4th, recording what I had witnessed, and trying to answer my editor’s question, what does it mean? “The Party Pulls the Trigger.”
In that 1989 article, in the closing paragraph, I tried to set down something that still applies today; not least as visitors to Beijing survey the massive security efforts, not all of which are intended strictly to protect the Olympics:
“No doubt when the Chinese government has finished dealing with its people, the tidy square will be presented again as a suitable site for tourists, visiting dignitaries and the Chinese public to come honor the heroes of China’s glorious revolution. It will be important then to remember the heroes of 1989, the people who cried out so many times these past six weeks, ‘Tell the world what we want. Tell the truth about China.’ “
On this massacre map, one of the important truths that stands out if you look at the ages of some of those who died that night, is that the Tiananmen uprising was not solely a student movement. Some of the people who in their passion for liberty tried to face down the guns of their own government were in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. Nor were they all killed in Tiananmen Square. From what I saw, my best estimate is that more were shot or crushed to death in the surrounding streets, trying to stop the advancing troops from reaching Tiananmen — which had become a symbol of the desire for freedom and justice.
Now come the 2008 Olympics, and while wishing the athletes well, I have little to add to what I wrote in early 2001, when Beijing was competing with Osaka, Istanbul, Paris and Toronto to host these games.
“…Trying to imagine the Olympic torch lit in Beijing, I keep remembering another torch, put there not at the behest of the communist regime, but by the protesters who nearly 12 years ago rose up by the millions to defy China’s tyranny. It was the torch held in both hands by the Chinese Goddess of Democracy — patterned after our Statue of Liberty — that for almost a week stood in Tiananmen Square, until it was destroyed by government troops on June 4, 1989.
When that symbolic flame of freedom can be safely lit again in China, it will be fitting to award Beijing the Olympic Games. Until then, the Olympics can better keep faith with human dignity — especially that of the Chinese people — by going somewhere else.”
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19 Comments
1. Bloodthirsty Liberal » The Best Tourist Guide to the Tianamen Massacre, Ever:[...] Claudia Rossett looks forward to the Beijing Olympics with a few memories of Beijing past. Nineteen years have passed, but as one of the eye-witnesses in the Beijing streets and in Tiananmen Square itself to that night of June 3-4, 1989, I look at this map and in memory can still hear the first cracks of the bullets, feel the treads of armored personnel carriers shaking the pavement, and see the people looking grimly at the advancing rows of helmets, silhouetted against the burning roadblocks. They were clutching bricks and bottles against the guns of their own country’s army. I remember a young man I saw closeup, shot in the chest, one of seven with bullet wounds I saw carried to a makeshift medical tent at the north end of Tiananmen Square during the final hours — and wonder if any of them are named in this document. I remember the demonstrators sitting in the spring breeze, shortly before dawn, on the steps of the monument to China’s Revolutionary Heroes, surrounded on three sides by tens of thousands of soldiers in the final standoff in Tiananmen Square — and facing off against the huge portrait of Mao, the white Goddess of Liberty statue that stood in Tiananmen for less than a week before China’s rulers knocked it down. [...]
Aug 7, 2008 - 3:46 am 2. Sin-U Nam:Tiananmen Massacre is still going on everyday in China near the border with North Korea. Hundreds of North Korean refugees are being violently repatriated every week to face imprisonment, torture, and execution by Kim Jong-il. A North Korean defector, Ms. Cho Jin-hae is on hunger strike since Aug. 3rd in front of the Chinese Embassy in D.C. at the Small Tiananmen Square Park. Ms. Cho met with W. Bush at the White House last week. What is W. Bush doing in Beijing? Make up your mind, Mr. Bush! Are you with us, or with them?
Aug 7, 2008 - 3:04 pm 3. T. Peter:Thank God for Claudia’s desperately needed clear trumpet call amidst the sickening chorus of compromise from mainstream Western media! The Chinese Communist Party’s hosting of the Olympics (let’s call a spade a spade, shall we??)and its thousands of acrobats and
Aug 7, 2008 - 7:22 pm 4. Pajamas Media » For Beijing Tourists: The Tiananmen Massacre Map:synchronized cheering and waving should remind everyone of what the Beijing Games and its highly touted opening ceremony really are:the Lite version of the Arirang Festival being held right next door in North Korea. Anybody from NBC, et al up to spinning the “improved human rights situation” there??
[...] the entire post here [...]
Aug 8, 2008 - 12:52 am 5. Concerned Citizen:The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used the games to intensify the persecution of Falun Gong. Falun Gong is a peaceful, Buddhist-based meditation and hundreds of thousands of these practitioners have been arrested in China. Recently, the persecution has stepped up, and flowed over to the U.S.
In the past month in Flushing, NY, a group of thugs incited by the local Chinese Consulate (the head of the Consulate was caught on tape admitting organizing and paying for it) viscously beat Falun Gong activists who were calmly standing on the sidewalk. Several of the thugs were arrested and 36 members of congress have called for President Bush to conduct an investigation. Here is a link: http://en.epochtimes.com/n2/united-states/flushing-1876.html
Also, practitioner’s computers in the U.S. have been hacked by the CCP, stealing information and names of other practitioners in China, who are then arrested. The Chinese think they have immunity from the laws of the U.S. in the U.S.
In San Francisco, I have personally spoken with some of these people who have been persecuted in China — old women, grandmothers whose homes were broken into and ransacked. They were then hauled off to prison and brainwashed, deprived of sleep and tortured. The CCP should be ashamed of this behavior.
Aug 8, 2008 - 6:18 am 6. ursa major:I have vowed not to watch one minute of NBC’s coverage of the Olympics on any channel or cable program controlled by them nor will I read one line of newspaper coverage in honor of those brave people who died 19 years ago. And by the way, isn’t it fitting that at the start of the Olympics, the Russians have begun making mischief in Georgia?
Aug 8, 2008 - 7:51 am 7. RE:Thank You, Claudia – for the truth telling you do.
Aug 8, 2008 - 8:21 am 8. gus3:What the world was allowed to see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4xtkpO7ZqU
The Tiananmen Massacre map illustrates what the world didn’t see.
Print many copies, then hand it out at the next moonbat protest you encounter.
Aug 8, 2008 - 11:08 am 9. Steynian 218 « Free Mark Steyn!:[...] CLAUDIA ROSETT: “This is one the official guides to the Olympics won’t be handing out, but it is vital to [...]
Aug 8, 2008 - 2:20 pm 10. Chaz:Maybe they’ll fall in nine years (like Hitler’s Third Reich and The USSR). I’m not holding my breath though.
With my mother being Korean, and myself having strong feelings of the issue, Communism would be a cancer best cut out sooner rather than later. Maybe the Nine Year rule will hold (being this: Any totalitarian regime that holds the olympics falls nine years later). I’d like to think that. If China were to no longer be communist, then North Korea would fall very shortly after.
It’s sad that we have a government going after people for deep breathing exercises, and yes, you can quote my dad on that.
Aug 8, 2008 - 3:12 pm 11. Blogosphère: les journalistes citoyens à Pékin - LeBuzz.info:[...] parlant de la place Tiananmen, allez voir cette carte “touristique” qui montre tous les endroits où les manifestants ont été arrêtés ou tués en juin 1989. Pour [...]
Aug 9, 2008 - 4:08 am 12. Jim:NBC’s coverage of the Olympic opening ceremony was a fawning tribute to China’s dedication to harmony, respect for nature, and cherishing of its peoples of 56 (I think) different ethnic groups. Sorry I can’t give you more, but I had to throw up.
Aug 9, 2008 - 6:37 am 13. Now tense:To all those that hear the whispers of freedom under the oppression of power and greed. Know that as that oppressor holds you so tight, all will pass, for the grip of oppression is like holding water with a fist. Freedom is holding water with a cupped hand. As those whispers slowly turn back to a conversation don’t forget to bring that hushed conversation into a chorus of song. To create ones freedom is the only way. No one can give you freedom it has to be realized by creating it as a collective thought.
Aug 9, 2008 - 7:46 am 14. The Olympic Must Read of the Day : Stop The ACLU:[...] if you read nothing else today, to read Claudia Rosett’s article on what lurks behind the spectacle of the Olympics in China. In that 1989 article, in the closing paragraph, I tried to set down something that still applies [...]
Aug 9, 2008 - 8:53 am 15. NoOneYouKnow:Moonbats? Uh, it’s been Bushco sucking up to the Chinese government for the past seven years; after all, they share the same motto: profits before people.
Aug 9, 2008 - 12:05 pm 16. srlucado:Am I the only one who thought the torch-lighting ceremony in Beijing was an incredible monument to tackiness? Aside from the fact that it was a mockery of China’s anti-freedom stance, it was like something out of Las Vegas – on sterois and meth.
I would have laughed, had the portent not been so serious.
Scott
Aug 9, 2008 - 12:38 pm 17. Andreas Kolb:I watched the opening ceremony. And the first thing that came into my mind was: 1936, 1980, 2008. Again a dictatorship managed to fool the world.
I saw it on Austrian tv and there wasn’t even one single word criticizing China on… whatever you wish. Human rights, Tibet, pollution, whatever. Not one single word. Nothing. The Austrian commentator cheered and praised China (yet he failed to even pronounce Tiananmen correctly, identified the Japanese PM as a member of the Japanese Imperial Family, etc). Not one word about the massacre, instead praises of how nice the square looked these days.
When they formed the “peace dove” the one thing that came into my mind was “how cynical”. they form a peace dove, talk about “one world, one dream” while people in China are arrested simply for saying their opinion, while Chinese soldiers occupy Tibet. What a farce. And yet so many people cheered on it.
Hitler was right when he said “the large mass of people is blind and stupid”.
Aug 9, 2008 - 3:52 pm 18. Laurie Gorham:Here is a map of the “Torture Outside the Olympic Village: A Guide to China’s Labor Camps” This is happening today! http://www.humanrightstorch.org/news/guide-to-olympic-village-labor-camps/ Please pass this on to any journalist or others who might be going to Beijing. Thank you for your article Ms. Rosett.
Aug 11, 2008 - 9:46 pm 19. chinese symbol faith:[...] the spectacle we are about to witness in Beijing. Created and circulated by?people who?have kept fhttp://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett/the-tiananmen-massacre-map/Chinese SymbolThe chinese symbol also reminds us of the Southern and Northern chinese influence in [...]
Aug 21, 2008 - 6:49 pm