Category Archives: June 4th Commemoration

Ernie Lowe: Free flying now

Down, down,
      down poison oak slopes
                down to a wooded canyon,
        down to recollect the whole
   in a ferny grove of redwoods,
          settling at last in a ring of trees
      where once one giant stood.

Continue reading

Jack McCarthy: ONE HUMAN HEART

for the martyrs of Tiananmen Square

The first generals ordered
to clear the square
refused and said,

“The people’s army
should not be used
against the people.”

Oh, the old chain-smokers
had other cards to play,
and it ended the way it seemed
that those things always would,
when men and women dreamed
too soon, too well—
crunch of truncheons, smell of b1ood,
the bucket in the corner of the cell;
Masada and Spartacus,
Boston Massacre, Harper’s Ferry,
Warsaw ghetto,
Hungary, Prague,
Kent State, Soweto.
Some would add Calvary. Continue reading

Lesley Duncan: CHINAMAN (GLASGOW, 1989)

I saw him near George, not Tiananmen, Square,

A Chinese student, taller than the norm,

Open-shirted like a fifties Socialist, Swinging a plastic poke from M and S,

And chewing on his lip. Continue reading

James Fenton: Tiananmen

Tianamen
Is broad and clean
And you can’t tell
Where the dead have been
And you can’t tell
What happened then
And you can’t speak
Of Tianamen.

You must not speak.
You must not think.
You must not dip
Your brush in ink.
You must not say
What happened then,
What happened there.
What happened there
In Tiananmen. Continue reading

SHAO JIANG: Remembrance and Resistance:the 26th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre (Beijing Massacre 1989)

On Thursday the 4th of June, 7pm-9pm, around 110 people gathered outside the Chinese Embassy in London to commemorate victims of the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. Commemorators read out the names of known victims of the massacre, and mark their names on a street map of Beijing showing the places where most of these victims were killed or the hospitals to which their bodies were taken. Continue reading

China Delays Trial of Sichuan Activist at Last Minute

Chen Yunfei1

Activist Chen Yunfei leads a protest against alleged pollution at a petrochemical plant in Pengzhou, in Sichuan province, March 6, 2015. Photo courtesy of an RFA listener

Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan have delayed the planned trial on public order charges of a veteran rights activist who visited the grave of a Tiananmen Square massacre victim, his lawyer said. Continue reading

Tens of Thousands Gather in Hong Kong to Mark Tiananmen Massacre

HK64More than 100,000 people gathered in Hong Kong on Saturday to mark the 27th anniversary of a military massacre that put a bloody end to the 1989 democracy movement on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, although cracks were beginning to appear in the city’s pro-democracy camp. Continue reading

China detains activists on Tiananmen anniversary

TAM1

A Chinese paramilitary guard stands in Tiananmen Square under portrait of Mao Zedong in Beijing on June 3, 2016, on the eve of the 27th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests

Chinese police have detained several activists while others were placed under surveillance for the anniversary of the bloody 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square, which was heavily policed on Saturday. Continue reading