Category Archives: Special Topics

The People’s Republic of Amnesia-The Legacy of Tiananmen Square

Posted on 05/16/2014 by | The People’s Republic of Amnesia-The Legacy of Tiananmen Square已关闭评论

The People’s Republic of Amnesia

The Legacy of Tiananmen Square

9780199347704
Price: $27.95

Format:
Hardback 240 pp.
6.125″ x 9.25″

ISBN-10:
0199347700

ISBN-13:
9780199347704

Publication date:
May 2014

Imprint: OUP US

Louisa Lim

Despite its emergence from backward isolation into a dynamic world economic power, a quarter-century after the People’s Army crushed unarmed protestors – labeled anti-revolutionaries – in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, the defining event of China’s modern history remains buried. Memory is dangerous in a country built to function on national amnesia. A single act of public remembrance might expose the frailty of the state’s carefully constructed edifice of accepted history, one kept aloft by strict censorship, blatant falsehood, and willful forgetting. Though the consequences of Tiananmen Square are visible everywhere throughout China, what happened there has been consigned to silence.

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An Open letter to Xi Jinping regarding illegal detention of Chinese scholars

Posted on 05/15/2014 by | An Open letter to Xi Jinping regarding illegal detention of Chinese scholars已关闭评论

 TIANANMEN INITIATIVE PROJECT

纪念”六四” 25周年倡议

An Open letter to Xi Jinping regarding illegal detention of Chinese scholars

05/13/2014

President Xi Jinping

Mr President:

We have learned that our fellow scholars Xu Youyu, Hao Jian, and Hu Shigen, and civil rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang and writer Liu Di, were criminally detained for “creating a disturbance in a public place, causing serious disorder”. The alleged reason for their detention was that on 3 May they were among the fifteen participants in a “ 2014 Workshop on Beijing’s June Fourth” that took place in a private apartment in Beijing.

These detentions raise many disturbing questions. For example, how can a private meeting “create disturbance in a public place”? These citizens were detained because they discussed an event that took place twenty-five years ago and that had a profound impact on the course of Chinese history. How can a discussion among scholars, lawyers and writers at someone’s home be considered a “disturbance”? As you have often reminded your Japanese counterparts, to be strong, a nation must confront its past. As scholars who have devoted our lives to the study of China, we are convinced that this country will only benefit from a free exchange of ideas that helps to establish historical truth.

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Posted in Headlines, June 4th Commemoration

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WE WILL NOT FORGET JUNE 4TH!-The 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre

Posted on 05/14/2014 by | 3 comments

TIANANMEN INITIATIVE PROJECT

WE WILL NOT FORGET JUNE 4TH!

June 4, 2014 will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. We call upon our colleagues around the world in schools and universities, civic organizations, foundations, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, and similar entities to sponsor and convene public events between April 15 and June 4, 2014, to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of liu si in the form of teach-ins, lectures, memorial marches, press conferences, and other appropriate forms.

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Posted in Headlines, June 4th Commemoration

Perry Link:China After Tiananmen: Money, Yes; Ideas, No

Posted on 05/14/2014 by | Perry Link:China After Tiananmen: Money, Yes; Ideas, No已关闭评论

Perry Link:China After Tiananmen: Money, Yes; Ideas, No
20140331-link-1_jpg_600x629_q85

David Turnley/Corbis
Soldiers and demonstrators at Tiananmen Square, May, 1989

The June Fourth Massacre in Beijing has had remarkable longevity. What happened in and around Tiananmen Square twenty-five years ago this June not only haunts the memories of people who witnessed the events and of friends and families of the victims, but also persists in the minds of people who stood, and still stand, with the attacking side. Deng Xiaoping, the man who said “go” for the final assault on thousands of Chinese citizens protesting peacefully for democracy, has died. But people who today are inside or allied with the political regime responsible for the killing remain acutely aware of it.

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Posted in Book Reviews, Headlines, June 4th Commemoration, News & Events

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Tiananmen Exiles:Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China Palgrave Studies in Oral History

Posted on 05/14/2014 by | Tiananmen Exiles:Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China Palgrave Studies in Oral History已关闭评论

Tiananmen Exiles:Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China Palgrave Studies in Oral History

 

9781137438317

Rowena Xiaoqing He and Foreword By Perry Link

Palgrave Macmillan, April 2014

ISBN: 978-1-137-43831-7, ISBN10: 1-137-43831-2,

6.000 x 9.250 inches, 240 pages,
In the spring of 1989, millions of citizens across China took to the streets in a nationwide uprising against government corruption and authoritarian rule. What began with widespread hope for political reform ended with the People’s Liberation Army firing on unarmed citizens in the capital city of Beijing, and those leaders who survived the crackdown became wanted criminals overnight. Among the witnesses to this unprecedented popular movement was Rowena Xiaoqing He, who would later join former student leaders and other exiles in North America, where she has worked tirelessly for over a decade to keep the memory of the Tiananmen Movement alive.

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ICPC Statement for International Human Rights Day

Posted on 12/08/2012 by | ICPC Statement for International Human Rights Day已关闭评论

For Press Release
8 December 2012

Today is the fourth detention anniversary of Dr. Liu Xiaobo, the former and honorary president of Independent Chinese PEN Centre (ICPC), and two days later it will be the second anniversary of awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize. Gazed by the whole world, the CCP’s 18th Congress held in Beijing last month has not resulted in any goodwill toward freedom but launched a new series of crackdown since prior to the Congress to repress freedom of expression and violate basic human rights of Chinese people. Not only Liu Xiaobo and other prisoners of conscience have been still in jail, and Liu Xiaobo’s wife Liu Xia, a poet and founding member of ICPC, has been still under house arrest since more the two years ago, but also a young activist Cao Haibo who initiated an online organization Zhenhua Club has been sentenced to 8-year imprisonment in Yunnan Province as well as a dissident writer Li Bifeng has been sentenced to 12-year imprisonment in Sichuan Province, respectively. In recent two months, there have been many forced disappearances, forced travels and illegal house arrest of many dissidents and activists including ICPC members for political “stability”. ICPC expresses its strong protest against these acts of Chinese authorities, and calls on the Chinese authorities to end their persecutions and respect citizens’ basic human rights including freedom of expression guaranteed by the Chinese Constitution and the International Human Rights Conventions, and to release Liu Xiaobo, Liu Xia and all of others under unjustl imprisonments and house arrest immediately and unconditionally. Continue reading →

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Posted in Documents, Headlines, ICPC News, Support Liu Xiaobo, Writers in Prison

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