US Congress calls for probe in Tiananmen resolution
　

AFP AND AP, WASHINGTON AND BEIJING
Thursday, Jun 04, 2009, Page 1

The US Congress called on Tuesday on China to launch a UN-backed probe into the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre and free all political prisoners on the eve of the bloodshed’s 20th anniversary.

The resolution was part of a more forceful response by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime advocate for human rights in China who caused a stir last week with her unusually muted comments while on a trip to Beijing.

The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution offering sympathy to those who died on June 3 and June 4, 1989, when Chinese troops crushed a pro-democracy uprising in Beijing’s vast central square.

The resolution asked China “to invite full and independent investigations into the Tiananmen Square crackdown, assisted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Committee of the Red Cross.”

It called on China to free the dozens of prisoners believed still to be in jail for taking part in the protests.

The resolution also demands that China end “harassment” of activists, including signatories of Charter 08 — a petition last year calling for political reform — and the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of relatives seeking a probe into the crackdown.

The resolution is likely to upset China, which regularly bristles at foreign criticism of its human rights record or its treatment of minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang.

However, US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not made any public comments yet ahead of the anniversary.

The House resolution was backed by Pelosi — who infuriated China in 1991 by unfurling a banner in Tiananmen Square but said little in public during a visit to discuss climate change.

Pelosi, who is third in line to the presidency, revealed on Tuesday that she had directly petitioned Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) for the release of 10 prisoners.

Pelosi rejected criticism that she had not pressed China on human rights during her weeklong trip that ended on Sunday.

“We had an agenda that focused on climate change but any agenda that we have with the government of China will also include human rights,” said Pelosi, who was also upbeat on US-China cooperation on global warming.

“Unless we talk about human rights in China and Tibet, we abdicate all authority to talk about human rights any place in the world,” Pelosi said.

Meanwhile, foreign journalists were barred from Tiananmen Square yesterday as police fanned out across the vast plaza.

Dozens of uniformed and plainclothes police guarded entrances to Tiananmen Square. Officers demanded identification and turned away those whose passports said they were journalists.

The sweeping measures have been imposed even though there were few signs of efforts to mark the protests within China, where the government squelches all discussion of them.

Wang Dan expresses hope for PRC youth, democracy

STAFF WRITER, WITH CNA
Thursday, Jun 04, 2009, Page 3

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, exiled Chinese democracy activist Wang Dan (王丹) said yesterday that the Internet was an area China was not able to control.

He said that although it might take a long time, the influence of the Internet had given him hope for the democratization of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Wang made the remarks during a conversation with researcher Lee Edwards at The Heritage Foundation in the US on Tuesday. In response to a question on how the younger Chinese generation looks at the Chinese democracy movement almost 20 years after the June 4 incident, Wang said this generation thinks differently from his generation, which placed more importance on ideology.

He said younger generations were more concerned about how to meet their material interests and were not concerned about ideological or impractical issues.

“Like everywhere else in the world, the younger generation shows more interest in money while the older generation values idealism. After the 1980s, materialism became the social mainstream and that had an impact on the younger generation,” Wang said.

But Wang said he was not disappointed with this phenomenon because at least the younger generation cared about its own interests. He said this mindset would lead to conflict between young people and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership as the latter fundamentally opposes basic individual rights.

Wang said the Internet could help young people understand the June 4 incident, adding that people cannot pin their hopes for the future of the Chinese democracy movement on the new CCP leadership.

“There are two Chinas now. One is the real and practical China, which is totally controlled by the CCP. The other China is a China based on the Internet,” Wang said. “That’s the base of the new social forces. It is the hope for civil society, and civil society is the hope for democracy.”

“It will take a long time, but at least I have seen the starting point,” Wang said.

DPP blocks Chinese student bill
　

By Flora Wang
STAFF REPORTER
Thursday, Jun 04, 2009, Page 3

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) once again brought to a standstill a meeting of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee that would have reviewed bills to allow Chinese students to attend schools in Taiwan

DPP legislators stalled the meeting by questioning the appropriateness of the decision by committee head Cheng Chin-ling (鄭金玲) to convene the meeting. They said there was a conflict of interest.

“Legislator Cheng’s father-in-law was founder of the Chien ­Hsing Industrial College, which is now called Ching Yun University [CYU],” DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said. “[The government’s plan] to recruit students from China in some sense is aimed at saving the nation’s private universities. Therefore, this meeting is illegitimate and should be immediately adjourned.”

In her defense, Cheng said her father-in-law passed away three years ago and that she had never been involved in the operations of CYU.

However, DPP legislators continued to occupy the podium and prevented Minister of Education Cheng Jei-cheng (鄭瑞城) from taking questions from lawmakers.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Yang ­Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and DPP legislators then engaged in a shouting match, with Yang blaming the DPP for paralyzing the meeting, while DPP Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) ignored Yang’s criticism by covering her ears.

Cheng Chin-ling adjourned the meeting at about noon after the DPP had paralyzed it for the entire morning.

Yesterday’s meeting was the committee’s fifth attempt to complete the preliminary review of proposed amendments to the University Act (大學法) and the Junior College Act (專科學校法) — two bills proposed by the Ministry of Education to allow Chinese students to enroll in Taiwanese universities.

The DPP has used numerous strategies to stall the review, including locking themselves in the committee’s conference room on May 4 and preventing KMT lawmakers from entering the room.

DPP Legislator William Lai (賴清德) lashed out at President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for urging the legislature to pass the proposed amendments as soon as possible.

“Ma Ying-jeou, as the president, tried to give the legislature instructions on when to pass bills. He did not respect the legislature and treated it as a bureau of the Presidential Office,” Lai said.

“With the KMT’s majority in the legislature, Ma acts like an emperor,” he said.

DPP Legislator Twu Shiing-jer (?? said the Ministry of Education should hold a referendum to allow the public to decide whether Chinese students are welcome to attend local schools.

In response, the KMT caucus threatened to propose allowing the bills to skip a preliminary review if the DPP continues to block it.

Yang urged the DPP to deliberate the bills rationally, adding that the KMT caucus supported a “liberal education market.”

Approached for comment after the meeting was dismissed, the education minister said he hoped lawmakers could discuss the bills rationally.

“We have complied with every request made by DPP legislators,” Cheng Jei-cheng said.

Beijing clamps down on Internet ahead of June 4

AP , BEIJING
Thursday, Jun 04, 2009, Page 5

Chinese authorities shut down blogs, Internet forums and social media sites such as Twitter in an apparent attempt to stem online political discussion ahead of today’s 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

As in past years, dissidents were rounded up and shipped out of Beijing and foreign media reports on the protests and continuing calls for an investigation into the events of June 3 to June 4, 1989, have been blocked.

‘INTENSIFIED CLAMPDOWN’

However, the cut-off of Internet sites marks a new chapter in the authorities’ attempts to muzzle dissent, one that testifies to the burgeoning influence of such technology among young Chinese in an authoritarian society where information is tightly controlled.

“There has been a really intensified clampdown on quasi-public discussion of awareness of this event,” said Xiao Qiang (蕭強), an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley and the director of Berkeley’s China Internet Project.

“It’s a discussion about where China is now and where China can go from here. So the authorities are making a major crackdown to block user-generated sites such as Twitter and show there is no right to public discussion,” he said.

MESSAGE BOARDS

China has the world’s largest online population and Internet communities have proven increasingly influential in spreading word of events to everything from student protests to group shopping excursions.

People are going outside the normal, controlled channels to set up communities online, spreading information about campus unrest and other activities that the government considers to be potentially subversive.

Government Internet monitors have closed message boards on more than 6,000 Web sites affiliated with colleges and universities, apparently to head off talk about the 1989 events, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.

TWITTER

Numerous blogs maintained by edgy government critics such as avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) have been blocked and the text-messaging service Twitter and pictures on photo sharing site Flikr could not be accessed within China yesterday.

Video sharing site YouTube has been blocked within China since March.

“We understand the Chinese government is blocking access to Flickr and other international sites, though the government has not issued any explanation,” said Jason Khoury, spokesman for Yahoo, which owns Flickr.

“We believe a broad restriction without a legal basis is inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression,” Khoury said.

Officials from Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

Police say seven ‘terror’ cells smashed this year
　

EXCUSES?: Last year, China said it detained around 1,300 people in Xinjiang for engaging in ‘terrorism’ and ‘religious extremism,’ among other charges

AFP , BEIJING
Thursday, Jun 04, 2009, Page 5

Chinese police claim they have smashed seven terror cells this year in Xinjiang Province, state media reported yesterday.

The China Daily said the cells were uncovered in Kashgar, China’s westernmost city and a key center of culture for Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic group that has long bridled under Chinese rule.

China has long claimed it faces a deadly threat from Muslim separatists as justification for extremely tight controls in Xinjiang, a region of vast deserts and towering mountains that borders central Asia.

No further details about the cells were given by the newspaper, which attributed the information to Zhang Jian (張健), the city’s Communist Party chief.

But it quoted Zhang as saying the region faced an ongoing threat from terrorists who “remote control” local operatives from abroad via the Internet.

“Now the battle against terror has extended to the virtual world as the terrorists use the Internet as their tool to spread their radical ideas,” he said.

However, Uighur exile groups accuse Beijing of inflating the threat as an excuse to suppress their culture and ethnic identity.

Zhang was quoted as saying Kashgar, an ancient Silk Road trading post, has seen 350 attacks resulting in the deaths of 60 government officials and civilians “since the 1990s.”

In April, China executed two Uighur men in Kashgar for what it called a “terrorist” attack last August in the city aimed at sabotaging the Olympics and that left 17 policemen dead, state media reported.

China arrested almost 1,300 people for “terrorism,” “religious extremism” and other “state security” charges in the region last year, state media said in January.

Faulty science and faulty politics
　

Thursday, Jun 04, 2009, Page 8

Anyone with a minimal understanding of democratic values and the ethnic diversity of this country would shy away from promoting ethnic nationalism. But Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Po-hsiung (吳伯雄) is apparently not one of them.

“One consensus between the Chinese Communist Party and the KMT is that both sides of the [Taiwan] Strait are all yan huang zisun [炎黃子孫, descendents of emperors Yan and Huang] and shoulder a common responsibility to revive Chinese culture,” Wu said in a speech at Nanjing University in China on Sunday.

“We belong to the same culture, and such is the might that glues the relations between the two sides of the Strait that it cannot be obliterated,” he said.

Wu said both sides of the Strait would use Chinese culture as the foundation to promote cross-strait exchanges and integration in areas such as education, academics, sports and arts and to “enhance the common existence and pride of [the Chinese] nation.”

Wu’s speech reveals a pride in Han Chinese “superiority” as well as a lack of understanding of Taiwan’s diverse culture.

Wu must be unaware that a genetic study by Marie Lin (林媽利), director of Mackay Memorial Hospital’s immunohematory reference laboratory, suggests that although only 1.5 percent of people in Taiwan are Aborigines, 85 percent of Hoklo and Hakka in Taiwan are genetically linked to Austronesians through hundreds of years of intermarriage with Aborigines.

Aside from a history of colonization by Dutch, Spanish and Japanese that has left its own mark, this nation consists of Hoklo, Hakka and Aborigines along with a growing population of immigrants from Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos, Indonesia and many other countries. National Immigration Agency statistics show that one out of eight newlywed couples are cross-border couples and one out of four newborns have an immigrant parent.

“Chinese culture” is undeniably one part of Taiwan’s culture today, but Taiwan has created a culture that is rich and diverse.

In 2007, then-premier Yu Shyi-kun coined the term “Chinese Taiwanese” to describe Taiwanese of Han ethnicity. Then-KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) attacked Yu, accusing him of harming ethnic harmony.

“How cruel are they to continue their attempts to divide instead of pursuing unity,” Ma said at the time.

Ma’s failure to chide Wu for neglecting the other ethnic components of Taiwan’s diverse culture should come as no surprise given the KMT’s reputation for double standards.

Wu also described what he said was a trend in Taiwan to eliminate all references and links to Chinese culture. But Wu told his Chinese audience that such an effort would never succeed because it went against mainstream opinion.

Wu got it wrong once again. There is no groundswell for eliminating all Chinese influence in Taiwan, simply efforts to reduce the over-riding role given to it during the KMT’s authoritarian era, just as there have been bids to limit the KMT’s linkage of the party to the state.

The ultimate goal of exalting Han blood ties between Taiwan and China is unification.

Taiwan is Taiwan, not China. Taiwanese take pride in their unique cultural blend. Taiwan’s future must be democratically determined by its people, not considered a foregone conclusion because of the racially conceived “China-centric” view of the KMT.

They only demanded their rights
　

By Ian Buruma
Thursday, Jun 04, 2009, Page 8

It is a chilling thought that exactly 20 years after the “Tiananmen Massacre” few young citizens of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have much idea of what happened on that occasion. Many unarmed Chinese were killed by People’s Liberation Army troops on June 4, 1989, not only in the vicinity of Tiananmen Square, but in cities all over China. Most were not students, who started the peaceful demonstrations against corruption and autocracy, but ordinary workers, the sort of people a communist party ought to be standing up for.

Young people don’t know, because most parents have shut up about it, lest they get themselves and their children in trouble, and because the subject is never mentioned in the official Chinese media; it is a taboo. Web sites mentioning the events of 1989 are closed down. E-mails are intercepted. People who still insist on talking about it in public are frequently arrested.

Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽) was general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1989. Although no democrat himself, his sympathies were with the student demonstrators. Because he opposed the hardliners in his own government, he was put under house arrest until his death in 2005, and his memoirs had to be smuggled out of the country on cassettes, disguised as Peking Opera recordings. They have just been published in English and Chinese, but cannot be legally distributed in China.

Zhao’s book will doubtlessly inspire more debates on what lessons we should draw from “June Fourth.” These are necessary debates. If only they could take place in China.

One strong school of thought that emerged almost as soon as the killing began in 1989 is that the more radical student leaders had been reckless. It should have been clear to them that a violent crackdown was inevitable. By provoking the regime, the students derailed any chance of slow political reform, which their more moderate elders had carefully set in train. Indeed, so proponents of this school often add, China was not yet ready for democracy. And mass demonstrations certainly were not going to achieve it.

Indeed, the radical student leaders had no more understanding of democracy than the CCP leaders they opposed. Life in the capital, and many Chinese cities, had been severely disrupted. The Chinese government was heavy-handed, to be sure, but had a perfect right to restore order in the streets.

If the student leaders had really wanted to take over the government, and use violence to do so, this theory would be convincing. Violent revolutions are rarely followed by liberal regimes. There is, however, no evidence that even the most radical students ever had such ambitions, and the demonstrations had been entirely peaceful. All the demonstrators had asked for was free speech, dialogue with the government, independent unions and an end to official corruption.

As to whether the demonstrations were doomed to end in failure and bloodshed, this too is easy to say in hindsight. History may never repeat itself precisely, but certain patterns can be discerned.

Demonstrations alone almost never topple a regime, but they can do so in combination with other political shifts, which can happen suddenly. When East Germans protested against their Communist autocrats in 1989, they were not assured of success either. Indeed, some party bosses wanted to bring out the tanks, just like their comrades in Beijing. But when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev refused to support a German crackdown, a mixture of overwhelming public protest and government bungling brought down the Berlin Wall.

South Korean students filling the streets of Seoul in 1986 could not have ended the authoritarian military government either. Again, it was a combination of events — pressure from the US, the impending Olympic Games and the presence of plausible opposition politicians — that did it.

The students in Tiananmen Square could not have known what was going on inside the closed regime. There were serious splits, but no one could have known exactly what the end results would be. In the event, Zhao’s conciliatory approach, which might have led to concessions — which in turn might have opened possibilities for a more open political system — lost out. Hardliners, who refused to give up their monopoly on power, won.

Would Zhao have prevailed, had the students retreated? Unlikely. In any case, it was not the place of the students, or the workers who supported them, to back any particular faction in the government. They lacked the authority. They were not politicians. All they asked for was more freedom. And this should be the main lesson to draw from those spring days in Beijing, and Shanghai and Guangzhou and many other places: Chinese have as much right as any other people to speak freely, without fear of arrest, to elect their own leaders, and to have laws that apply to everyone, even to the leaders themselves.

On June 4, 1989, thousands of Chinese were killed for demanding less than that. The best way to remember them is to reaffirm their right to liberties that millions of people, in the West and in many parts of Asia, take for granted. The worst way is to blame a few students who insisted on that right until it was too late.

Ian Buruma is a professor of democracy, human rights and journalism at Bard College.

Democracy, not rehabilitation, is key
　

By Liang Wen-chieh 梁文傑
Thursday, Jun 04, 2009, Page 8

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus has submitted a motion calling on China to rehabilitate the 1989 movement that culminated in the June 4, or Tiananmen, Incident. Although the DPP’s intentions are good, the use of the word “rehabilitate” is open to question.

Throughout the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), there have been countless cases where false accusations led to wrongful convictions. Many of those unjustly accused or convicted were later “rehabilitated.” Such cases can be divided into two categories.

The first category is where a movement was deemed to have been wrong. In such cases, the people who launched the movement will be punished, while the victims are “rehabilitated.” For example, following the complete negation of the Cultural Revolution, the Gang of Four were put on trial, and some former leading Red Guards were sentenced to life imprisonment. People who were labeled “capitalist roaders” or “active counterrevolutionaries” during the Cultural Revolution had their rights and reputations restored and received compensation.

The second category is where a movement is deemed to have been correct, but targeted the wrong people. Such cases call for “correction” rather than “rehabilitation.” For example, many people were wrongly labeled as “rightists” during the Anti-Rightist movement of the late 1950s, and lost their jobs or were demoted because of this label. Since the Anti-Rightist movement itself is not considered to have been in error, the most its victims can expect is to get their jobs back or regain their status, but they will not be compensated for their losses.

Whether a case is resolved by “rehabilitation” or “correction,” it is done according to the logic of one-party rule. Where the CCP’s leadership did something wrong, now some of them will be punished, and the party will apologize to the victims and help restore their rights and reputations. That is as far as it goes. The party will not resign from office or share power with anyone else.

Just as in feudal times, when emperors issued public apologies, punished the corrupt and dismissed tyrannical officials, the emperor was still the emperor.

“Rehabilitation” and “correction” are both favors bestowed by the party — favors that it can take back any time. Someone who has been rehabilitated may be declared guilty again. For example, many people who were labeled “rightists” in 1959 had their cases “corrected” in 1962, but when the Cultural Revolution arrived in 1966 they were labeled “rightists” again.

Qu Qiubai (瞿秋白) was a CCP leader who was executed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government in 1935. In 1945, the CCP determined that Qu was guilty of “ultra-left putschist errors.” In 1955, his remains were transferred to Beijing’s Babaoshan Cemetery, a gesture that signified his reputation had been rehabilitated. In 1966, Mao Zedong (毛澤東) again labeled Qu a renegade, but in 1980 Qu was rehabilitated a second time. Whatever twists and turns the case took, the CCP Central Committee had the final word.

“Rehabilitation” and “correction” can even be used to strengthen the CCP’s rule. Starting in 1978, the CCP removed the “rightist” label form 550,000 people in five batches. Many “rightists” have said they were overcome with emotion, even weeping and shouting “Long live the Communist Party!” when they were told of their rehabilitation. They were filled with gratitude toward top CCP leaders such as Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) and Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦).

Party leaders have frequently manipulated the process of correcting mistakes to boost their own popularity. It is entirely possible that, at some point, a CCP general secretary will decide to do the same with respect to June 4.

Those who call for the June 4 movement to be “rehabilitated” are in effect praying for an enlightened leadership to set aright past injustices. Although the demand for “rehabilitation” seems to further the cause of freedom and democracy in China, those who make it do not necessarily mean to challenge the CCP’s monopoly on power.

For example, a recent poll of students at Hong Kong University found a majority supported urging the Chinese authorities to make public the truth about the June 4 events, make a positive assessment of the 1989 democracy movement and release imprisoned democracy activists. The students felt the Chinese authorities should apologize to the public, investigate who was responsible for the massacre and pay compensation to people who were injured and to the families of those who were killed. However, the poll did not touch on the question of establishing a democratic system in China.

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) once said that there could be no talk of unification until the June 4 movement was “rehabilitated,” as if all that were needed for the Taiwanese to accept unification was for the CCP to offer an apology and rewrite a bit of history.

Those who care about democracy in China should have learned by now that calling for the “rehabilitation” of the June 4 movement is worthless because it won’t help establish democracy in China.

As Chinese dissident Wang Dan (王丹) said, the main point is not “rehabilitating” June 4, but democratizing China. The DPP legislators’ call for the CCP to “rehabilitate” the June 4 movement concedes too much and demands too little.

Liang Wen-chieh is deputy director of the New Society for Taiwan.