HRIC June 4th Podcast Series

FAQ: About HRIC and Podcasts

Q. What is "June 4th"?

A. In the spring of 1989, the Chinese government ordered the suppression of a peaceful protest movement that had been carried out by students, workers, and civilians in China's major cities over a period of two months.

The center of the protest movement was Tiananmen Square in Beijing, where tens of thousands of students camped out to press their demands for democratic reform and a halt to China's escalating corruption problem, and where more than one million people marched carrying banners and shouting slogans.

On the night of June 3, 1989, the government ordered the People's Liberation Army to clear the square. On the afternoon of June 3rd, martial law troops moved into Beijing and clashed with civilians trying to block their way to Tiananmen Square. In the early hours of June 4th, the troops cleared the square and opened fire on unarmed students and civilians in the surrounding area who resisted the suppression.

The total number of dead, wounded, imprisoned and executed remains unknown, because the Chinese government has consistently refused to carry out a thorough investigation or accounting of the events of June 1989.

Q. What is "HRIC"?

A. Founded by Chinese students and scholars in March 1989, Human Rights in China (HRIC) is an international, Chinese, non-governmental organization with a mission to promote universally recognized human rights and advance the institutional protection of these rights in the People's Republic of China (China).

HRIC's approach is a long-term process of engaging multiple international actors, including the media, governments, corporations, various United Nations bodies, and other multilateral organizations.

HRIC's education, research, and advocacy strategies are guided by three key objectives:

Supporting the work of local civil society groups to promote the process of economic, administrative, and legal reforms;
Generating international pressure for social change through monitoring to ensure accountability, transparency, and compliance with the Chinese government's international human rights obligations; and
Strengthening international human rights frameworks and facilitating international cooperation by working with other non-governmental organizations, the UN, and other multilateral and bilateral organizations, national governments, and donors.

Q. What are podcasts?

A. Podcasts are audio files that can be easily and automatically downloaded onto your computer.

By subscribing to HRIC's June 4th Podcast series feed through any variety of free software (for example, iTunes), your software will periodically check this Web site and download new interviews when they are available.

For more information on podcasts, please visit Wikipedia's Podcasting entry.

For more information on subscribing to podcasts using iTunes, please visit iTunes's Web site.

Q. Where can I read more about what HRIC does?

A. For more information on HRIC, please visit HRIC's main Web site, http://hrichina.org and HRIC's Incorporating Responsibility: 2008 campaign Web site, http://ir2008.org.

For a categorized selection of HRIC resources, reports, and publications, please visit the "Where's Hu Now?" Web site.

Back issues of HRIC's English-language quarterly journal, China Rights Forum (CRF) are available online. Since its founding in 1990, CRF has gained a reputation as an important source of information regarding China's human rights developments. CRF provides space for the voices of Chinese dissidents, scholars, artists, writers and activists promoting democratic reform, labor rights, freedom of expression, and the rights of religious and ethnic minorities and disadvantaged groups.

CRF is distributed to more than 3,500 individuals and institutions, including Chinese students and scholars abroad, international China experts, journalists, human rights-related NGOs, government officials, and experts and delegates to the UN Human Rights Commission and other human rights bodies.

Q. Who are the Tiananmen Mothers?

A. Under the banner of the rights defender group Tiananmen Mothers, those wounded during the crackdown and the families of those who were killed or disappeared have banded together to challenge the official claims about what really happened. Those in this network provide support to each other and work together to gather information about what really happened in those tragic days at the beginning of June.

The efforts of the Tiananmen Mothers have been met with persecution from the Chinese government. Their repeated requests for dialogue with the government and for a proper investigation of the events have been met with silence. Yet the Tiananmen Mothers have refused to give up their fight against the cycle of impunity that has allowed perpetrators of violations of human rights in China to go unpunished again and again. Their demands for accountability have been joined by other calls and open letters.