Tiananmen activists languish in jail 19 years on
Updated
Today, June the 4th, marks the anniversary of the military suppression of 1989 democracy movement in China.
Nineteen years after the troops rolled through the streets of Beijng and other Chinese cities, to crush the rising tide of dissent...people are still being locked for their involvement, or for demanding a national accounting of exactly what happened ...and why.
Presenter: Tom Fayle
Speaker: Sophie Richardson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch
RICHARDSON : Well, unfortunately the numbers remain at best at estimate. We used the figure 130 people. But in part because the government has never clearly accounted for who it charged, with what, and why... and who it may have released since 1989. That's really about as precise a figure as one can come up with.
FAYLE: But we can assume that they were initially student activists?
RICHARDSON: Primarily yes, most people were charged, I mean hundreds of people were charged with everything ranging from counter-revolutionary offences to hooliganism and subsequently people who have publicly dared to challenge the government's official version of events have also been arrested, some of them on charges of violating national security.
FAYLE: Now, is there any sign that discussion about the crackdown and its aftermath is becoming any more open 19 years on?
RICHARDSON: None whatsoever, and in fact it's our view that the Chinese Government has tried to use, and is trying to use the Olympics as a way of sort of replacing in the popular memory the images of the lone man standing in front of a tank, with rather different images, some of them related to the Olympics. And indeed, the Chinese Government proposed at one point to the International Olympic Committee that the 2008 Olympic beach volleyball be held on Tiananmen Square and the IOC, which is not known for its political astuteness did manage to suggest that was not acceptable and asked the Chinese Government to change that plan. But the opening ceremony for the domestic leg of the torch relay and the closing ceremony for that will be held at Tiananmen, and I think this is part of the government's way of sort of reshaping the popular memory of what's happened on that spot.
FAYLE: But, doesn't the media openness displayed during the recent Sichuan earthquake offer any optimism for a change?
RICHARDSON: Well, I think we'll be more enthusiastic about media openness when it's equally applied to issues where the government doesn't look so good as ones where it looks great. That's really the acid test here.
FAYLE: Now accept for those directly affected, is it now a largely forgotten event, something that happened a long time ago and a long way away in peoples memories?
RICHARDSON: I think it's alarming that particularly younger generations of students are not aware of what happens in 1989, even if you ask around on some of the campuses of the most elite academic institutions in the country, people simply don't know about this event because it was essentially expunged from official history. But there are certainly communities of older people, and particularly the Tiananmen Mothers who have continued to try and keep their children's cases alive and find out what happened to them who I think are not 19 years on they are still campaigning and I don't see any suggestion that they intend to flag their interest any time soon.
FAYLE: But they don't get particularly much traction within China itself. They get more publicity overseas?
RICHARDSON: That is correct, that is correct and I think it's safe to say that of all the human rights issues, the Chinese Government dislikes discussing Tiananmen remains in the top two or three without a doubt.
FAYLE: So what do you want the Chinese Government to do?
RICHARDSON: Well, we've suggested that one way of making good on these broad promises to improve the human rights environment in China in advance of the games would be to free the people who are still in prison. They were never probably tried, the charges are almost certainly spurious and that we think would be the best way in fact to sort of heal the public memory and demonstrate the government is serious about making human rights improvements.
FAYLE: Now, the United States State Department has just come out and said that calling on China to give a full account of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Do you think appeals like this from foreign governments actually help?
RICHARDSON: Well, I'm of two minds about that. I mean in general, yes they do, because it's important that the Chinese Government hear from other governments it considers important and influential that they care about these particular events. At the same time, the United States Government just concluded a bilateral human rights dialogue with the Chinese Government last weekend that left a great deal to be desired by the human rights community, in particular, because these dialogues have tended to be quite empty vehicles wherein relatively little concrete progress gets made on human rights and we're of the view that this is essentially a gesture that makes it more politically possible for President Bush to go ahead and attend the Olympics in August, rather than a real discussion about human rights improvement.
