Han Dongfang: Han was detained in June 1989 for his role in the Tiananmen protests and for organizing China's first independent trade union since 1949, and was subsequently held for 22 months in prison without charge. In 1992, the Chinese government permitted Han to go to the US for medical treatment, but subsequently cancelled his passport and has refused his multiple efforts to return to China without disclosing the legal basis for those refusals. Han is based in Hong Kong, where he researches labor-rights abuses and publishes the China Labor Bulletin.
Ma Shaofang: In June 1989, Ma was 10th on the Chinese government's list of most-wanted dissidents and served a three-year prison term for his role as a Tiananmen student protest organizer. Two decades later, Ma, now a Shenzhen-based businessman, continues to be subject to police monitoring of his movements and activities. On October 13, 2007, Ministry of State Security officers warned Ma not to attend a writers' conference in Beijing during the 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. In a blog posting in which Ma recounted the encounter, the State Security officers warned that, "If you get into trouble, we will be there and it won't be good for you."
Fang Zheng: A 42-year-old former student at the Beijing Academy of Physical Science, Fang had his legs crushed on June 4 under a tank while pushing a female student protester out of the tank's path. Fang was subsequently expelled from school after refusing to publicly deny the source of his injury, but went on to become China's wheelchair discus and javelin champion in 1992 and 1993. However, Fang's Tiananmen connections prompted the Chinese government to bar him from competing in the Far East Games for the Disabled in Beijing in 1994 despite his promise not to discuss with foreign journalists the cause of his injury. Fang told a reporter from Singapore's New Paper in September 2008 that he maintained public silence and avoided travel to Beijing around the 2008 Beijing Olympics due to promises from government security forces that he would be given a job if he kept quiet and stayed away Beijing ahead of during the Games. "I will wait and see what they have to offer, since I have nothing more to lose," Fang said.
Censoring History
The Chinese government continues to systematically erase from the public record any mention of the events of June 1989 that do not conform to the government's assessment of the bloody crackdown as a "political disturbance."
China's online censors quickly remove any references to the 1989 crackdown, and internet search engines in China are carefully calibrated to filter out any images or references to the deaths of unarmed civilians for search requests on topics including "Tiananmen Square" and "June 4." Web searches for such terms typically yield "page could not be found" messages, and generally do not inform the user that the search has been censored.
Under dictates of China's official Propaganda Department, the domestic print media are forbidden to publish articles on the events of June 1989 inconsistent with the government's version. In 2003, then-US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton pulled her memoirs from sale in China after it was revealed that her Chinese publisher had without her approval omitted her references to the 1989 democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
Like individuals who speak publicly about Tiananmen, media outlets that do so are also punished. In June 2007, the Sichuan province daily newspaper the Chengdu Evening News reportedly sacked three editorial staff after the paper ran a classified ad which paid tribute to the families of victims of the Tiananmen Massacre. Copies of the paper which carried the one-line ad with the words "Saluting the strong mothers of the victims of 64 [a reference to June 4]" were quickly pulled from circulation.
On March 31, 2009, Beijing Public Security Bureau officers briefly detained Jiang Qisheng, 61, deputy chairman of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre and a former Tiananmen Square student protester, due to concerns that he was writing an article to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. "They said not a single article was allowed this year for the 20th anniversary," Jiang later told the South China Morning Post.
In 1995, former Tiananmen student protester and political activist Li Hai was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of violating state secrets laws for compiling a list of names of those killed in June 1989. Li spent the majority of his jail term in solitary confinement.
One result of this official chokehold on information about June 1989 is a profound lack of public knowledge of one of the most important events in China in living memory. At least three foreign news organizations including a US Public Broadcasting Service program, Frontline, have conducted informal surveys over the past 10 years, asking groups of university students and Beijing residents to identify the context of the photograph - iconic outside of China - of "tank man," an unidentified Beijing citizen who on June 5, 1989, stood down a column of 17 army tanks near Tiananmen Square. Few if any have been able - or willing - to do so.
Human Rights Watch Recommendations
To the Chinese Government:
• The Chinese government should issue an immediate amnesty for those still imprisoned on charges related to the events of June 1989 and launch an independent review of their cases to determine possible miscarriages of justice in terms of violations of due legal process. The government should absolve and compensate those individuals determined to have been unfairly or illegally imprisoned.
• The Chinese government should immediately permit the unimpeded return of Chinese citizens exiled due to their connections to the events of June 1989.
• The Chinese government should respect and enforce citizens' rights to freedom of speech and expression and cease the detention and harassment of individuals who challenge the official account of the events of June 1989.
• The Chinese government should permit an independent inquiry into the events of June 1989. Such an inquiry should be open to the public, allow the participation of victims' families, including the Tiananmen Mothers, and the substance of its proceedings and conclusions should be made public in a complete and timely manner. Such an inquiry is obviously impossible until the government stops harassing and silencing the victims of the events of June 1989 and takes substantive steps to preserve the historical record of what transpired at that time. When these prerequisites have been met, the Chinese government should issue and uphold explicit public guarantees that participants will not be subject to official reprisals.
• The Chinese government should initiate a mechanism for victims of the violence of June 1989 and/or their family members to claim official compensation for their losses.
• The Chinese government should launch criminal proceedings against any government and military officials who gave the orders for and/or participated in the use of lethal force against unarmed civilians in Beijing and other major cities in June 1989.
• The government should amend its recently released National Action Plan for Human Rights to include specific references which stipulate respect for the rights of the victims of June 1989 and their families.
To the International Community:
• The European Union should resist calls to lift its arms embargo until the Chinese government completes an independent public investigation of the crackdown and holds accountable those government and military officials responsible for the use of lethal force against unarmed civilians. In addition, the EU should insist on a general amnesty for all those jailed for all forms of peaceful protest in China. Those convictions should be reviewed and overturned if there were procedural safeguards or lack of evidence of serious criminal acts.
• Governments, particularly those that have bilateral human rights dialogues with the Chinese government, should make their concerns about the 1989 crackdown and its legacy a touchstone of its engagement with the Chinese government on human rights, and establish measurable benchmarks and timelines for the Chinese government to address the rights abuses, past and present, connected to the events of 1989.
• Foreign governments should urge China to amend its recently released National Action Plan for Human Rights to include specific references which stipulate respect for the rights of the victims of June 1989 and their families and actionable targets and deadlines to ensure those rights are respected.
• Foreign governments should publicly observe the 20th anniversary of the events of June 1989 by opening their embassies in Beijing to the general public on June 3-4, 2009, as safe zones where Chinese citizens could access uncensored information about the events of June 1989, and engage in discussions about those events and their legacy.
• Those countries with bilateral human rights dialogues with China should make these recommendations a key component of their human rights engagement with China in 2009.
• Member states of the Berne Process for human rights engagement with China should reconvene on or around June 3-4 to discuss means to adopt and implement these recommendations.
