- Luo Siling
- BBC Chinese Contributing Writer.
June 3, 2022
image source,Getty Images
Hong Kong used to be one of the few places in China that could publicly commemorate June 4th.
On January 6, 1989, Fang Lizhi, who had been expelled from the CCP, revoked from the position of vice president of the University of Science and Technology of China, and transferred to the Beijing Observatory, wrote a letter to Deng Xiaoping, requesting the release of all Chinese citizens, including Wei Jingsheng. Political prisoners to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, the 70th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement and the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution.
Subsequently, many intellectuals joined the petition. In April, the “1989” student democracy movement that shocked the world broke out. Fang Lizhi was also identified by the CCP as a man behind the scenes, and this letter became one of his criminal evidence.
Fang Li later recalled that there were three copies of the letter at that time, one of which was dropped into the mailbox outside the observatory on January 6 and sent to Deng Xiaoping’s office. The other two, one was given to Liu Da, former Secretary of the Party Committee of the University of Science and Technology of China, and the other was given to Perry Link, the representative of the US-China Academic Exchange Committee of the National Academy of Sciences in Beijing. For more than 30 years, Professor Lin Perry has kept the original copy of the letter.
Recently, he donated the letter to the “June 4th Memorial Museum in New York” which is under construction. The letter became one of the most important exhibits in the six-month-long “June 4th” special exhibition held by the initiators in Washington on Friday (June 3).
Professor Lin Peirui told BBC Chinese that some different details can be seen in the original document, “It can be seen that Fang Lizhi wrote two words wrong, and then rewritten it after covering with correction fluid. This kind of details will be given to the audience. A sense of intimacy.”
The open letter written by Fang Lizhi to Deng Xiaoping in January 1989, collected by the “June 4th Memorial Museum in New York”, was donated by Professor Lin Peirui.
“Historical Memory”
As the world‘s only memorial to the Tiananmen Massacre, the “Hong Kong June 4 Memorial” was forced to close last year.
In January this year, more than 50 overseas pro-democracy activists and “June 4th” survivors jointly launched an initiative to build a memorial hall in New York. Wang Dan, one of the leaders of the “June 4th” pro-democracy movement, called on “all friends who hope to stick to this historical memory to participate in this historical project together.”
Wang Dan said that the six-month-long special exhibition on the 33rd anniversary of June 4th held in Washington is the first step in establishing a memorial hall, hoping to attract attention and support from the outside world.
The exhibition held at the “Foundation for Victims of Communism” venue in Washington, USA, displayed hundreds of items related to “June 4th”, most of which came from personal collections and donations. Many of the exhibits are real objects from Tiananmen Square 33 years ago, such as a tent that was brought out hours before the Tiananmen Statue of Democracy was torn down by tanks, leaflets circulated by students in the square at that time, Jiang Lin, a reporter from the People’s Liberation Army Daily Blood clothes and some newspaper reports of the year.
Professor Lin Peirui also donated his own collection of Fang Lizhi’s handwritten letter to Deng Xiaoping, the then leader of the Communist Party of China.
He recalled that on January 7, 1989, Fang called him and said he had something for him. After he went to Fang Li’s house, Fang gave him the letter and asked him to transfer it to the American Academy of Sciences.
Lin Perry asked if he could translate it into English for the international media, and he agreed. So Lin Peirui translated the letter into English and gave it to the American Academy of Sciences and foreign media reporters stationed in Beijing at that time, and it became an open letter.
“Fang Lizhi wrote this letter at the time, without any plan to launch any movement, just wanted to convey this meaning to Deng Xiaoping and to the world. But later, Chinese officials believed that this letter triggered the 1989 democracy movement.” He Say.
Fang Lizhi was expelled from public office for supporting the demands of pro-democracy students. After the “June 4th” Tiananmen Square Massacre, he and his wife entered the US embassy to seek asylum. After a year, he was able to leave Beijing and live in exile in the United States. Fang died in Tucson, Arizona, in 2012 at the age of 76.
The flyer on Tiananmen Square on June 3, 1989, collected by the “June 4th Memorial Hall in New York”, donated by Rui Chaohuai.
Zhou Fengsuo was one of the 21 student leaders wanted by the Chinese government in 1989, and later founded the “Humane China” organization, which has collected a lot of physical objects and materials about the “June 4th” over the years. A large part of the exhibits in the “June 4th” special exhibition held in Washington are from his personal collection.
Zhou Fengsuo introduced that the student tent was used by students from other places in Beijing in Tiananmen Square. It was donated by the Hong Kong Stake (responsible for operating the “Hong Kong June 4 Memorial Hall” and was forced to disband) to the students on hunger strike in Tiananmen Square.
Just a few hours before the tanks entered Tiananmen Square for clearance, a student surnamed Qiu put away his own tent, kept it, and brought it to the United States.
Wang Dan has also donated his collection over the years, including a letter written to him on November 12, 1991 by the late Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner and the late well-known Chinese dissident.
He said he was in prison when he received Liu Xiaobo’s letter. This year Wang Dan was 22 years old, and at the end of Liu Xiaobo’s letter was a poem to the 22-year-old:
22 years old is an open universe
Only one voice rises from the center of the earth
only one color paints the sky
Beyond time, space and language.
The letter that Liu Xiaobo wrote to Wang Dan in prison in 1991, collected by the “June 4th Memorial Museum in New York”, was donated by Wang Dan.
“Recreating the Historic Landscape”
Not long after the proposal to build the “June 4 Memorial Hall in New York” was issued, on February 16, a New York Chinese community held a seminar in New York against the establishment of such a facility. Sitting on the podium was one of the 21 wanted student leaders that year. Xiong Yan.
In this regard, Wang Dan said that Xiong Yan, as the student leader of the year, now publicly opposes the commemoration of “June 4th”.
He also said that after the proposal to establish the “June 4 Memorial Hall in New York” was issued, the New York pro-communist overseas Chinese group also moved to express their objections; at the same time, the backstage of the official website of the memorial hall was repeatedly logged in and attacked for no reason.
There is no evidence that Beijing is behind the scenes, but Wang Dan believes that this shows that the establishment of the “June 4th” memorial hall has caused great fear in the CCP.
Wang Dan said: “One thing the CCP has been doing for 33 years is to erase the memory of June 4th. The longer it goes, the more we should commemorate it.， Because no civilization can survive without a memory. “
He also admitted that the most difficult thing to build the “June 4 Memorial Museum in New York” was the issue of funding. Although nearly $300,000 has been raised so far, donations may become less and less in the future. This is still far from the goal of establishing a physical “June 4th” memorial. In this regard, Wang Dan said: “Do as much as you have money.”
Professor Xu Youyu, a resident scholar at the New School in New York, was a teacher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1989. He said that his students lived in tents like Tiananmen Square at the time, and they felt “very cordial and moved” when they saw the real objects.
He said: “As a witness on the night of the June 4 massacre, I had a feeling at the time that this scene would definitely not be forgotten. My later thought was that these must not be forgotten.”
Hu Ping, who was also a witness back then and now lives in the United States, said that for those who witnessed the “June 4th” in 1989, the memory is unforgettable and hard to forget, but for later generations, this may not be the case. If these real objects are presented to give people a representation of the historical landscape, it will be more powerful than words.
“The ‘June 4th Memorial Hall’ should not only be done, but also continue to be done, to present these objects, so that people from generation to generation will have a deep memory and form an unforgettable memory,” he said.
“Fighting the Carnage of Memory”
Xu Youyu said that in contemporary China, there is a phenomenon that people forget many major historical events, but this is not due to people’s natural forgetting, but the result of the CCP’s use of state machinery and violence to kill and suppress.
“The witnesses have a primary and special duty and responsibility when it comes to preserving historical memory. We cannot blame young people or the next generation for not being interested in the historical truth, because under the blockade of the authorities, they have no idea that it actually happened. What happened. The witnesses and the parties concerned should keep talking and writing, actively participate in the relevant commemorative activities, and make the trickle of personal memory merge into the torrent of collective memory and national memory.”
According to Chen Chuangchuang, a student studying in the United States, there are actually two kinds of massacres around “89”. One is the massacre of the flesh by tanks and bullets at that time; the other is the massacre of memory for many years later.
“The massacre of memories actually started on the day of June 4th. They said it was a riot and they were suppressing the thugs. In fact, this is not the case at all. This is the massacre of memories, not only on that day, but also continue to this day,” he said.
He said that if the “June 4” exiled students were the survivors of the first massacre, then all the rest of us were the survivors, witnesses and rebels of the second massacre.
“In the massacre of memory, we are still resisting. Now that the June 4th Memorial Hall in Hong Kong is closed, we will move to New York to remember and fight against the massacre of memory.”