“This is for the lost souls of June 4th.” - Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, 2010
Thirty five years ago the Chinese Pro-Democracy Movement that had taken to the streets in April of 1989 and occupied Tiananmen Square for months was violently crushed by the Chinese communist dictatorship beginning on the evening of June 3, 1989. By dawn on June 4, 1989 scores of demonstrators were shot and killed or run over and crushed by tanks of the so-called "People's Liberation Army."
A 2017 declassified British diplomatic cable revealed that "at least 10,000 people were killed. The Chinese Communist regime still defends committing this massacre, and is punishing those who seek to remember and observe the date.
To commemorate the 35th anniversary of June 4th, Yi Bao has specially translated five memoir articles by Mr. Zhou Duo, one of the four gentlemen of Tiananmen Square, into English for the convenience of English readers. Please feel free to share! Part 1https://t.co/2CjDKM99UI pic.twitter.com/3zrDLROg0y
— YiBao English《議報》英文 (@yibao_en) June 2, 2024
George Orwell wrote in "As I Please" in the Tribune on February 4, 1944 that "[t]he
really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits
'atrocities' but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it
claims to control the past as well as the future."
On this day in 1989, the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on civilian protesters in Tiananmen Square. Revisit @JiayangFan’s remembrance of the event, which occurred when she was a a young child in Chongqing, China. https://t.co/fu2itksbZv pic.twitter.com/UyZIBdFwNw
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) June 2, 2024
We are witnessing this attempt to silence the victims, erase
and rewrite the history of the 1989 Tiananmen protests and the
crackdown and massacre that began on June 3, 1989 through social media
and in the real world. People are being arrested for engaging in silent,
nonviolent protests in remembrance of students and workers murdered by
the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) on orders of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP). Making this known is the most effective method to combat
it.
June 2: a bunch of 🇨🇳 CCP tankies — Chinese Americans / 🇨🇳 nationals — ferociously yelling “long live the communist party!” and “bog off and go back to Taiwan!” offensively harassed people commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre in Flushing, NYC. pic.twitter.com/cHspFOMpxR
— Byron Wan (@Byron_Wan) June 3, 2024
The Czech writer Milan Kundera wrote that "[t]he struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." This is the challenge presented by the Chinese Communist Party in its effort to erase the mass protests, months long occupation and crackdown in Tiananmen Square, and across China. It is also why we must remember and honor courageous Chinese dissidents such as Liu Xiaobo martyred for his commitment to nonviolence and democracy.
Hong Kong Christian newspaper runs blank front page ahead of Tiananmen crackdown anniversary
— Hong Kong Free Press HKFP (@hkfp) June 3, 2024
🔗 https://t.co/Dr588HP3b3 pic.twitter.com/fK86dYsLkr
No comments:
Post a Comment