D**S
发帖数: 24887 | 1 http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/06/03/188316096/Mothers
(For 24 years, Ding Zilin has sought justice for the death of her 17-year-
old son, Jiang Jielian, on June 3, the night before Chinese authorities
cracked down on protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Now, the 76-year-
old despairs that she will die before she is allowed to mourn her son on the
spot where he was killed. She stands in front of a small shrine to her son
in her Beijing home.)
Ding Zilin has spent the past 24 years on one mission: seeking justice for
the death of her son, 17-year-old Jiang Jielian, who was shot in the back by
Chinese soldiers on the night of June 3, 1989.
This year, her mood is one of black despair.
"It's possible that before I leave this world, I won't see justice," the
frail 76-year-old told me. We're sitting in the living room of her Beijing
home, near a shrine to her son that includes a wooden cabinet holding his
ashes.
Ding co-founded the group known as the Tiananmen Mothers, after the Chinese
government's crackdown on protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4
, 1989.
— none has received any official reply — speaks of the "general sense of
despair" permeating Chinese society, amid dashed hopes that new President Xi
Jinping would bring political changes.
"What we see, precisely, are giant steps backwards towards Maoist orthodoxy,
" the letter reads, casting Xi as just the latest Chinese leader who has
failed to undertake political reforms. "They come one after another, as if
through a revolving door; and as they move forward, they become ever more
distant and outrageous, causing a universal feeling of despair to descend."
In the days since her interview with NPR, Ding and her husband, Jiang Peikun
, have not been allowed to leave their apartment. They had wanted to mourn
their son at the spot where he died, but they have not been permitted to do
so.
“ Since June 4, there has not been a big Tiananmen, but how many little
Tiananmens have there been? How many little Tiananmens are there every day?
- Bao Tong, former official jailed after June 4 protests
"We are both old people, getting on for 80 years old," they wrote in an
email. "We do not have much time. We will not have many opportunities left
to hold memorials."
Authorities have prevented another founding member of the Tiananmen Mothers,
Zhang Xianling, from visiting Hong Kong in the runup to the anniversary.
Her 19-year-old son was shot dead while taking photographs of the martial
law troops. This year, she lent the dented helmet he was wearing that night
to a temporary museum in Hong Kong that was commemorating June 4. The former
British colony is the only place on Chinese soil where candlelight vigils
are permitted, to remember the killings.
Zhang had been scheduled to accompany her husband, Wang Fandi, a musician of
the pipa, a traditional Chinese instrument, to watch a pipa competition in
Hong Kong.
But Chinese police warned her not to visit Hong Kong at this "sensitive"
time. In a phone conversation, she said the authorities' mishandling of her
trip was almost comical.
"It should have been a very good cultural event and now, it's become a
scandal that violates my human rights," she said.
Lasting Impacts Of Crackdown
The Chinese authorities show no sign of reassessing the events of 24 years
ago. At a recent briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei made that
very clear.
"China has already reached a clear conclusion on the political turmoil that
took place at the end of the 1980s as well as on all related issues," he
said.
One lasting impact of the crackdown has been its legitimization of violence
to put down protests, according to , who was the most senior government
official to be imprisoned in 1989. He spent seven years in prison on charges
of leaking a state secret, counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement.
Bao sees the crackdown as beginning the era of "," when the Chinese state
has little compunction about using its security apparatus to suppress
protests.
"If such a thing was possible at the highest levels, then why not at lower
levels?" he asks. "Since June 4, there has not been a big Tiananmen, but how
many little Tiananmens have there been? How many little Tiananmens are
there every day?"
The Internet Impact
However, a major change since 1989 has been the increasing importance of the
Internet and social media in China.
"There already is a democracy movement online," Chen Ziming said in a recent
interview. Accused of being the "black hand" behind the student
demonstrations, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison after 1989.
(A woman reads a book in front of portraits of Tiananmen victims at the June
4 Memorial Museum run by pro-democracy activists at City University in Hong
Kong on Monday, the eve of the 24th anniversary of the crackdown.)
(A paramilitary police officer stands guard at Tiananmen Square in Beijing
on Monday.)
These days, he still lives in Beijing and works as an independent political
analyst. He said Weibo, which is the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, could
change the political landscape.
"Now in the Weibo era, it has become a major online democracy movement. If
you think about the early democracy movements in the '70s and '80s, there
was only a small group of people involved," Chen said. "Now with Weibo, it
has become a large crowd."
But China's government has taken action to neuter the power of social media,
by rolling out more sophisticated censorship tools that sanitize online
search results on Weibo instead of banning them. Rather than announcing that
the search terms are censored, it produces a list of politically acceptable
results. An example is a search for the term Tiananmen Square. It produces
videos and pictures of the flag-raising ceremony on the square marking
Children's Day, while failing to include more politically sensitive material.
Nonetheless, some Chinese activists have used social media to call for
people to .
A Weak U.S. Response
Back at her house in Beijing, activist Ding did not save her censure for the
Chinese government alone. Noting the U.S.-China summit scheduled for the
end of this week, she also criticized President Obama's weak response when
authorities put writer and democracy activist Liu Xiaobo under residential
surveillance in a police-run hotel, in December 2008. Liu would go on to win
the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.
Ding pointed out that there was a full six months until he was formally
arrested and charged with "incitement of subversion of state power," and she
believes a lack of vocal U.S. condemnation during that time emboldened the
Chinese government to give Liu an 11-year sentence.
"They were checking the direction of the wind, seeing how the U.S. reacted,"
she said, characterizing the Chinese government's attitude during his
initial detention. "But I think Obama was weak. There was almost no reaction
."
Reflecting on the upcoming summit in California, she did not hold back: "
Obama is not a president who cares about human rights."
(Wang Nan was 19 years old when he was shot dead during the crackdown on
Tiananmen Square. Chinese authorities recently pressured his mother, Zhang
Xianling, not to go to Hong Kong — the only place on Chinese territory
where June 4 is commemorated — in the days ahead of the anniversary.) | D**S
发帖数: 24887 | 2 无助却坚忍的眼神,让人想到朱令父母. 某种意义上他们的际遇是相似的. |
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