It was the largest anti-government protest in Communist China’s history, with more than a million students and workers involved. In the end it would produce a human rights travesty that was hailed by the Chinese government as a successful operation to thwart the plans of what Deng Xiaoping would ultimately refer to as ‘counter-revolutionaries’.
No one knows for sure how many people were killed during the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Some speculate that hundreds were gunned down, others that several thousand lost their lives. To this day, the Chinese government has never held an official inquiry into what transpired after military force was approved to deal with the situation. Those prominent in the organization of the protests remain incarcerated, others continue to be constantly monitored by the government, and even discussing the events that took place has, for many, become taboo – foreign journalists, for example, have been prevented from visiting the square this week by local authorities.
The Chinese government is, by no means, the only government in the world to use force against peaceful protesters demanding change. It’s happened everywhere from South America to Ireland, South Asia to South Africa, and even at Kent State University in Ohio.
During a protest in South Africa in the early 1900’s, the founder of the Natal Indian Congress inspired others to burn their identity cards under the premise that as citizens of the British Empire they should not have to endure racial inequality. In the seven years that followed, that man would be jailed, others would be killed, but not one of them lifted a finger to fight back. That man was Mohandas K. Gandhi and the theory that he put into practice during that period was called Satyagraha, the very same philosophy that he would bring with him to India when he returned in 1915.
For most in the West, what happened at Tiananmen Square has been symbolized for two decades by a single photograph, that of a lone man standing in front of a tank refusing to move. The most important aspect of that photograph is that it shows a man that not only believed that his country’s future was worth the risk, but one that was unwilling to employ violence to achieve his objective – thus revealing the most important aspect of the June Fourth Movement. That it attempted what very few have ever successfully achieved – change without mass violence.
Another aspect of what occurred that is often overlooked is that the decision to use force to end the protests was not unanimous within the Chinese government. In truth, the decision to use force caused a divide within the politburo itself, resulting in the removal and eventual house arrest of General Secretary Zhao Ziyang and various others who supported the protestors. Ziyang would remain under house arrest until his death in 2005.
In the end, it is the example of those that dared, and the unknown number of those that died, in an attempt to affect change without the use of violence that should provide focus. Because even though the attempt failed, the legacy of what occurred at Tiananmen Square is one steeped in the victory of enlightenment. That something worth dying for does not have to be something worth killing for.