Remember Tiananmen Square? I was reminded of those halcyon and tragic days last week when I ran across an article in the New York Review of Books from May 20, 2014. It marked the 25th anniversary of that fervent outbreak of longing for freedom and equality led by Chinese students in the capital of Beijing. The incident began peacefully enough on the 15th of April 1989 and lasted until it was violently terminated June 4th by the army of the People’s Republic of China
International media were there. Reporters were there, describing the scene and interviewing participants. We heard their authentic pleas for freedom. I recall two images in particular. One was a young man in a white shirt standing in front of a military tank, blocking its progress along a broad boulevard. The tank swerved, but the student blocked its path again. This happened several times until the tank finally stopped and the driver climbed out. The other scene was a person, obviously on stilts and costumed as the Statue of Liberty (including the characteristic patina of green) making her way through the crowd of protesters to their loud applause and blessing their movement.
On May 20, the Chinese government imposed martial law. The joy and energy of the demonstrators evaporated when on June 4th the army moved into the Square. Reporter Jonathan Mirsky provided this eyewitness account:
Sunday, June 4, I cycled back to the edge of the square just in time to see soldiers mow down parents of students who had come to look for those who had not returned home and who were feared to have been killed and their bodies burned ... doctors and nurses from the Peking Union Hospital ... arrived in an ambulance and in their bloodstained gowns went among the fallen; the soldiers shot them down, too.
In 2006, Chinese human rights lawyer, Pu Zhiquang, reflected, “If I just slouch along through life, taking the easy route, what do I say to the spirits of those murdered ‘rioters’ of seventeen years ago? And if everyone forgets, are we not opening the door to future massacres?”
What if everyone forgets?
Last week we observed the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion that began the last year of WW II in Europe. Over 160,000 soldiers (American, British and Canadian) mounted the largest amphibious military operation in history. They crossed the English Channel the night of June 5th and 6th and landed on the Beaches of Normandy in northern France. The landing sectors’ code names, Omaha, Utah, Gold, Sword, and Juno live in our collective memory along with other venerable names: Operation Overlord, St. Lo, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. That same night, as the ships were plowing across the Channel, gliders delivered nearly 4,000 soldiers, crash-landing them inland to capture key bridges. Further inland, over 13,000 paratroopers landed and secured inland routes for men and materiel. On that first day, over 10,000 Allied soldiers were killed, wounded or declared missing.
What if everyone forgets?
June the 6th last week marked an equally important memorial: the three year and 5-month anniversary of the invasion of the US Capitol, an attempted coup by backers of the then-Republican candidate for President. You saw it on the evening news! For many days. Here’s my account of it from the February 22, 2021 issue of The Pine Belt News.
“What rage and savagery were on the faces of those intruders! By all accounts, many of them believed the former President, that the election had been stolen from him, and that this last Constitutionally mandated action by the US Senate, to count the state-certified Electoral College totals, was their last chance to, as the slogan went, “Stop the Steal ... Stopping the “steal” required Vice-President Pence to refuse to recognize the Electoral votes of certain states, ... [an] unconstitutional [act] (as VP Pence affirmed [earlier that day]).
“And what if the rioters had caught Vice-President Pence and Speaker Pelosi? Would they have beat them to death on the spot? Would they have dragged them out to the Capitol steps, assembled an ad hoc firing squad and shot them on national TV? Would they have held them in a People’s Jail overnight and assembled a Kangaroo Kourt the next day and held a public “trial” before sending them to the firing squad or the gallows? Look at their faces; listen to their voices; watch their actions.”
What if everyone forgets?
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Dr. Conville is a professor of communication studies (ret.) and long-time resident of Hattiesburg. He can be reached at rlconville@yahoo.com.
