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星期二, 10月 28, 2014

"The Tiananmen Movement and Collective Memory in China" class



Pendleton Atrium, Wellesley College
PNE Atrium
Wed, Oct 29
1:45-3:00pm

On Oct. 29 Wednesday, we will have an extraordinary opportunity to converse with two of the survivors of the Tiananmen Massacre. Event organized by Prof. Rowena He and students of her SOC289 "The Tiananmen Movement and Collective Memory in China" class. Thanks to the Freedom Project for funding.

In the spring of 1989, millions of people took to the streets demanding political reforms. The nationwide movement, highlighted by the college students’ hunger strike in Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing, ended with the People’s Liberation Army firing on its own people under the gaze of the entire world. Even today the number of deaths and injuries on that fateful night remains unknown. More than 200,000 soldiers, equipped with tanks and AK-47s, participated in the lethal action.

A quarter century later, Tiananmen remains a political taboo and forbidden memory in China. The Tiananmen Mothers are still prohibited from openly mourning their family members, exiles are still turned away when they try to return home to visit a sick parent or to attend a loved one’s funeral, and scholars working on the topic are regularly denied visas.

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FANG ZHENG

Fang Zheng was a senior at Beijing Sports College in 1989. As he and other student protesters were peacefully evacuating from Tiananmen Square on June 4, a tank drove over from behind and crashed his two legs. The authorities forced him to lie that his legs had been crushed by a car, not a tank. When Fang refused, he was denied his diploma.

In 1992, Fang Zheng won gold medals for the wheelchair javelin and discus events at the Third National Games for the Disabled. In 1994, he was trained for the “Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled” just before the Games started, but was dismissed when the authorities found out the cause of his disability. He was banned from all international sports competitions, kept under surveillance, and illegally detained on different occasions.

The New York Times describes him as “Alone, Disabled and barred.” During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he was put under house arrest. In February 2009, he, his wife, and their child were eventually allowed to leave China. He now lives with his family in San Francisco.

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LIANE LEE

Liane Lee was a senior in journalism at the Hong Kong Baptist University in 1989. She was selected to represent the Hong Kong Federation of Students and made two trips to Beijing to provide tents and medical supplies to support the Chinese students’ struggles for democracy.

She witnessed the June 4 military crackdown and was rescued near Tiananmen Square by local citizens who ushered her into an ambulance and asked to “to leave alive to tell the world.” She left the city on an evacuation flight sent from Hong Kong on June 5. She now lives in Ohio with her husband and her daughter.

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"The Chinese people have been forced to forget the Tiananmen massacre. There has been no public debate about the event, no official apology. The media aren’t allowed to mention it. Still today people are being persecuted and imprisoned for disseminating information about it." - Ma Jian, acclaimed Chinese writer, The New York Times, 2008

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