Assessing the fallout from Tiananmen

By Don Murray

The bloody scars of the past have been airbrushed out of the photo and those who try to draw attention to that cleansing of the historical record have been hustled away.

Consider the case of Liu Xiaobo, one of the leaders of the Tiananmen protests in 1989. I met him a year ago, just after the 19th anniversary of the crackdown.

Liu hadn't been available in the run-up to the day. Chinese security police had locked him in his apartment and cut him off from the rest of the world. When they did eventually let him out, they drove him to his meetings.
Some obvious symbolism as cannons fire a salute in Tiananmen Square on June 3, 2009, the day before the 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown in 1989. Security was heavy in the square and authorities blocked certain social networking websites. (Elizabeth Dalziel/Associated Press)Some obvious symbolism as cannons fire a salute in Tiananmen Square on June 3, 2009, the day before the 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown in 1989. Security was heavy in the square and authorities blocked certain social networking websites. (Elizabeth Dalziel/Associated Press)

Liu was sardonic about his treatment.

As a result of his role at Tiananmen, he had been tried for counter-revolutionary activity and jailed three times.

Still, he said, last summer as the Beijing Olympics beckoned, things were improving.

"When I was arrested in 1996, they ransacked my apartment and left a mess. When I was arrested a decade later they came with white gloves, and when they left, they put things back."
That was then

There will be no interviews with Liu this year, however. In December 2008, he led a group of intellectuals in drawing up and publishing Charter 08, a petition calling for respect for human rights, representative government, an independent judiciary and a federal system for China.

The petition was an updated, condensed call for democracy that was last heard loudly in public in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
An unidentified Chinese man stands in front of a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, where hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed. (Jeff Widener/Associated Press)

It's an iconic image. A lone figure confronting a column of menacing tanks in Tiannamen Square in 1989. It seemed to symbolize the overwhelming odds faced by China's short lived pro-democracy movement. Though it happened just 20 years ago, the event seems like ancient history to most Chinese, observes the CBC's Michel Cormier (video runs: 4:01).

Right after the publication of Charter 08, Liu was promptly arrested and taken away. His wife has seen him just once since then. The authorities won't say where he's being held.

Charter 08 was consciously modelled on Charter 77, the Czech call for freedom and human rights drawn up by playwright and dissident Vaclav Havel in 1977 when the Communists ruled Eastern Europe.

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