The brave youngsters who sacrificed themselves for a freer China are remembered around the world. But not in mainland China
TODAY IS A BAD WORD. No, really. Over the years, I have fought several editors who have thought “June 4” was a term which was too controversial and shocking to print, just like, say, the phrase “I like karaoke”.
This is because the Chinese politburo’s official historians, an imaginative group of fantasy writers, have put out a series of statements which can be paraphrased thus:
“All the things that happened in and around Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, didn’t happen.”
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I’m sitting in my office on a rainy June 4 morning and I am in contemplative mood.
Isn’t it odd how dates become iconic? For Americans, 9/11 is iconic and for Londoners, 7/7. Bangladeshis remember December 17, when their war ended, and Sri Lankans are likely to remember May 19 this year, when victory over the Tigers was declared. Sometimes these dates grow into actual live creatures, powered by groups of citizens.
I once encountered an Albanian whose political party was called “The November 8 Communist Party”. This suggests every day of the year has its own communist party in Albania. Another good reason not to visit.
Turkey has a political group called September 10 which publishes a magazine also called September 10. This is kind of weird, because every copy of the magazine carries that date on its cover, which must give rise to lots of misunderstandings.
A: I bought a magazine.
B: Is it September 10?
A: No, I bought it this morning.
B: But is it September 10 magazine?
A: No, it’s the latest issue. I just bought it this morning. Etc.
The same country has a political group called June 16. Eventually there may be an election in which citizens choose whether they want to be ruled by September 10 or June 16.
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All this reminds me of the actress Tuesday Weld, who once dated a tycoon called Frederick March III. If she had married him, people no doubt would have called her Tuesday March the Third.
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But June 4 has many painful memories for this writer. Twenty years ago on this date the newspaper for which I worked in Hong Kong received lots of weeping eye-witness reports about the authorities re-educating the students with guns and tanks.
Yet as the years passed, many of the editors for whom I worked went into censorship mode (I won’t actually name Jonathan Fenby, oops). The “Tiananmen Square massacre” became “the June 4 incident”. In some references, “incident” was further diluted to “accident”. It was as if Chinese leaders had said, “Oops, sent in the tanks. Oops, ordered the students to be shot. Oops, ran over protestors, silly us.”
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Now, every year or two, members of the Hong Kong elite tell us to forget June 4 and move on. They are surprised that we ordinary people of the city react with horror, stamp our feet and say NO.
Solidarity with the youngsters who hoped for a more open China is a key part of Hong Kong’s identity. Because we’re freer than the rest of China, we have a vital role: Hong Kong is China’s memory and its conscience. Our leaders act as if they don’t realize this, but the average woman in the Wan Chai market knows it instinctively.
June 4 is worth remembering. The young man with the shopping bags who stopped a row of tanks may be dead. But the image of what he did will inspire people around the globe forever.
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Incidentally, lots of politically important dates become movements: the June 2 Movement, the May 4 Movement and so on. One can only be grateful that the supporters of Mackenzie Bowell, who won him the job of Canadian Prime Minister in 1894, never formed a group to mark their achievement.
It would have been the December 21 Bowell Movement, a name which people who don’t like politics might think was all too accurate.
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Now, 20 years later, on a rainy Thursday morning, I note that a few powerful people in Hong Kong still insist that no one died on June 4 in Beijing. They look stupid. Even the Chinese government admits that at least 240 people were killed, and the Chinese Red Cross puts it at ten times that number.
But I really don’t mind when powerful people make themselves look dumb and dishonest.
They’re just doing my job for me.
