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June Fourth Backgrounder

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June Fourth refers to the June 3-4, 1989 government military crackdown that ended the large-scale, peaceful protests in Beijing and other cities that spring and early summer. Despite persistent citizen demands for the truth and an accounting of the bloodshed, the authorities have offered nothing beyond their characterization that the protests were “counterrevolutionary riots”—a  label they later changed to “political disturbance” (政治风波)—which “the Party and state suppressed by using decisive measures.” (党和国家采取果断措施平息).

In 1989, a spontaneous gathering of students on April 15 in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang, the liberal former CPC General Secretary, grew over the following weeks into a massive protest with demonstrations in Beijing as well as more than 400 other cities in China. It came to be known as the 1989 Democracy Movement.

The students were joined by other Beijing residents, including workers and labor union activists, teachers, journalists, and government cadres, in their call for a reassessment of Hu Yaobang (who was forced to resigned in January 1987), an end to corruption, a free press, and disclosure of the incomes of leaders and their families. On May 13, several hundred students from Peking University began a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square. More than one million people—from all walks of life—marched in Beijing on May 17 to support the hunger strikers, and again on May 21, in defiance of the martial law imposed the day before.  Despite the peaceful nature of the protests, the authorities called them “turmoil,” and responded with force.

In late May, hundreds of thousands of People’s Liberation Army troops converged on Beijing. In the night of June 3-4, soldiers, inside columns of tanks, headed toward Tiananmen Square and carried out their order to “clear” it. They opened fire on unarmed students and other civilians in the surrounding areas. The crackdown was carried out in other cities too.

Although The 1989 Democracy Movement riveted attention around the world, and the Chinese government’s bloody crackdown was condemned by the international community, it succeeded in chilling the Chinese civil society’s calls for democratic reforms and an end to corruption. Many Chinese leaders since have cited the “stability” that followed the crackdown as a prerequisite for China’s rapid economic reform. (“Killing 200,000 for 20 years of stability,” the saying went.)

Challenges

Official impunity

Despite repeated demands by Chinese citizens for an official accounting of the truth of the June Fourth crackdown, the Chinese government has never publicly accounted for its actions with an independent and open investigation, brought to justice those responsible for the killing of unarmed civilians, or compensated the survivors or families of those killed. In fact, it has never made public even the names and the number of people killed or wounded during the crackdown, or of those executed or imprisoned afterwards in connection with the protests. Many believe that several hundred people were killed, but to date, there are no authoritative estimates of the casualties.

Enforced amnesia

Since 1989, the Chinese government has censored public discussion of the 1989 Democracy Movement and the June Fourth crackdown, and prohibited public commemorations of June Fourth victims on anniversaries of the crackdown.

Responses

International

Immediately after June Fourth, many countries expressed shock and consternation. But some, including East Germany, Romania, and Czechoslovakia—communist countries at the time—supported the Chinese government’s action. The United States and European Union imposed an arms embargo that is still in place in 2013.

Because of the massive contingents of international press that had remained in Beijing after covering Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit in mid-May, images of the protestors in Tiananmen Square and the tanks advancing against them, and of the scenes of the flight of the protestors, the help that citizens provided to those shot by soldiers, and the bloody aftermath quickly went around the world. These images would, in the eyes of people everywhere, become a lasting testament of a people’s aspiration for democracy and freedom and an indelible mark of an authoritarian regime’s brutal crushing of that aspiration.

Mainland China

Despite on-going suppression, over the years, individuals and groups have taken diverse actions to fight enforced amnesia and get at the truth. Examples include: the 1999 publication in book form—The Tiananmen Papers—of internal government and Party documents compiled by Zhang Liang (pseudonym) that revealed the decision-making process in the CPC’s higher echelons in Spring 1989; Tan Zuoren’s 2007 essay, “1989: Bearing Witness to the Ultimate Beauty—Diary of an Eyewitness from the Square;” and the May 2013 publication of Tiananmen Massacre, a collection of eyewitness accounts of the June Fourth crackdown compiled by journalist Du Bin.

Since the early 2010s, an increasing—albeit still very small—number of individuals and groups have been using different ways to publicly commemorate those who perished in June Fourth, including in public gatherings and in words or images sent out via Twitter. These actions make evident people’s refusal to forget and the need to heal the national trauma.

Among the most persistent efforts in pressing the government for redress have come from the group the Tiananmen Mothers. 

The Tiananmen Mothers

The Tiananmen Mothers is a group of 156 (as of June 2013) survivors and family members of victims of the June Fourth crackdown (including 33 members who are deceased). In the absence of an official list of June Fourth casualties, the group has spent years searching for the families of those killed, and documented 202 victims of the crackdown.[1]

For more than two decades since its formation in 1992, the group has maintained three core demands of the government—truth, compensation, accountability:

  • Truth: Conduct an independent and fair investigation, and make public the results, including the names and numbers of those who died;
  • Compensation: Provide explanations to the families of the victims, with compensation to the victims’ relatives in accordance with the law;
  • Accountability: Prosecute those responsible.

Since 1999, the group has reached out to the authorities to engage in a dialogue to resolve these issues but has never received a response.

Instead, the authorities have systematically tried to suppress the group’s efforts by preventing group members from holding open commemorations on June Fourth anniversaries and by subjecting them to various forms of harassment, including tight surveillance during “sensitive” periods, house arrests, and detention. On October 8, 2010, the day of the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize for Liu Xiaobo, Ding Zilin, a spokesperson of the group, and her husband Jiang Peikun, were put under house arrest—with all communications with the outside world cut off—that lasted for 74 days.

“In the mid-2000s, in order to document the stories of June Fourth victims, the group spent several years interviewing on video survivors and relatives of those who were killed. The 21 edited interviews were posted in entirety on the website of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, the largest grassroots pro-democracy advocacy group in Hong Kong. The footage also formed the core of “Portraits of Loss and the Quest for Justice,” a video documentary Human Rights in China produced in 2009.”

[1] Figure cited in “Hope Fades as Despair Draws Near: on the 24th Anniversary of the June Fourth Tragedy,” an essay by Tiananmen Mothers, May 31, 2013 http://www.hrichina.org/content/6709.

Hong Kong

On May 21, 1989, the day after martial law was imposed in Beijing, one million Hong Kongers—roughly one in five people—marched in protest. One hundred days after the June Fourth crackdown, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements organized a candlelight vigil in Victoria Park.

In another testament to the people’s need for redress of both past impunity and ongoing human rights abuses, Hong Kongers have made this vigil an annual event. Every year on June 4, Hong Kongers—in numbers ranging from tens of thousands to more than 100,000, including an increasing number of those born after 1989—have continued to commemorate those killed in 1989. In 2013, the Alliance reported that 150,000 people took part. In addition, increasing numbers of mainland visitors have been attending these vigils in recent years.

Videos from the Tiananmen Mothers’ 30th anniversary commemoration of June Fourth victims
March 2019