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Title: MUST READ/HEAR: Spirit of Tiananmen Square Lives: Survivor
Source:
Blogs at NPR
URL Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way ... 6/tiananmen_square_legacy.html
Published: Jun 4, 2009
Author: Frank James
Post Date: 2009-06-04 21:04:38 by Deasy
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Keywords: Doc Martens, NWO, Here, Big Brother
Views: 172
Comments: 8
Poster note: the man interviewed in the audio segment posted at the end of this story talks about how good it feels to address one's fellow citizens on the things that matter most, namely the yearning for freedom. Please listen when you have a chance. I think too few of our fellow Americans understand why we speak up and write about our frustrations with growing signs of tyranny. The desire to be heard and to articulate anger and resentment at oppression is common to all people who love freedom. This man, Zhou, expressed this so well that I had to point out how much in common I feel with him. Zhou Fengsuo at a 1996 Tiananmen Square observance in Washington D.C. RICHARD ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images They ultimately lost their confrontation with after Chinese soldiers killed hundreds. The true death toll still isn't known on this, the 20th anniversary. But truth crushed the earth will rise again, as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, and that certainly is the sense one gets from listening to All Things Considered host Melissa Block's interview with Zhou Fengsuo, who was a student-leader at Tiananmen and now lives in San Francisco. Zhou recalls the exhilarating days leading to the deadly climax, a period when university students and workers by the tens of thousands flooded into the square to demand an end to official corruption. He remembers how relatively peaceful the vast crowd was. He also recalls his sense of foreboding when it became clear the military was about to crackdown, the fear when they finally did and the horror of leaving the square only to see 40 dead bodies, some of them students like himself, lying on a street outside a hospital. But the spirit of Tiananmen wasn't killed, Zhou told Melissa. An excerpt from their discussion: MELISSA: In China? ZHOU: In China. And I was really surprised by their reaction when I just talked about the facts of what I went through. They all knew the government did something terrible but they didn't know the full detail. They wanted to ask me questions after my speech. They kept me two hours... Every year I get a lot of requests for more true facts of what happened. If we just send in the facts people can just draw the conclusion themselves. Most of them are still students. That's why I think the government is so afraid today. It's the power of truth and justice. They cannot overcome it by economic development or their military muscle. They have to show respect for its own people to be truly respected internally and externally. Zhou was imprisoned without trial for a year after Tiananmen, then eventually left China for the U.S. where he entered business school. In a piece of irony Zhou, who made it out of Tiananmen Square unscathed, was beaten by pro-Chinese counter demonstrators last year when he attended a San Francisco protest against China's hosting of the Beijing Olympics timed for the Olympic torch's passage through the city.
Poster Comment:
When we think of Tiananmen Square, we think of the idealism and courage of the students and workers who confronted the might of the Chinese government.
MELISSA: When you think back on Tiananmen it's a chapter that's been almost completely erased from Chinese history. There's a whole generation of Chinese young people now who don't know anything about what happened. What does that say to you about the legacy of Tiananmen Square?
ZHOU: The dreams are still there, the dreams for a country with freedom, where people can live with dignity is still there. In particular, the call for end of corruption still resonates among most Chinese today. Whenever they want to fight corruption, they will think about 1989.
In fact this declaration of personal wealth of officials, every year people keep pushing for it. Even this year in official people's parliament, they're pushing for it. But everyone knows where it's from. It's from 20 years ago...Although the facts are basically cleansed completely, every year I get a lot of requests. Actually recently I had the honor of talking to students who are still in college, mainland college now.
All Things Considered, June 4, 2009 · Thursday is the 20th anniversary of the massacre at Tiananmen Square. On that day, the Chinese military cracked down on pro-democracy student protesters. Scores of people were killed. Zhou Fengsuo, one of the student leaders present on that day, offers his insight.
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#1. To: Deasy (#0)
Those students put their asses on the line for freedom risking a certain stomping by the communist party. They were braver in the face of brutal tyranny than Americans are right now facing successive tyrannicl administrations here.
Some of them are the new face of China's economic powerhouse now.
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