By Jamil Anderlini in BeijingAuthor alerts
Zhou Fengsuo©Zhou Fengsuo
The Chinese Communist party’s efforts to erase all trace of the Tiananmen Square massacre have proved a little too successful, allowing a former student leader to slip into the country to commemorate the 25th anniversary this week.
Zhou Fengsuo, fifth on Beijing’s list of 21 “most wanted” student demonstrators published days after the events of June 4 1989, was captured in the aftermath of the massacre. He spent a year in prison before being released under pressure from Washington and sent into exile in the US, where he became a citizen.
But this week Mr Zhou was able to travel to China unimpeded and commemorate the 25-year anniversary by visiting Tiananmen Square at the exact time of day when the bloody crackdown began. He entered the country on his US passport under a 72-hour visa-waiver programme.
Chinese authorities have detained dozens of people in the run-up to this year’s anniversary. Chinese-Australian artist Guo Jian was detained by Beijing police on June 1, a day after an interview with him about the events of 1989 appeared in the Financial Times.
On Thursday, the consular head at Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs said Beijing police had told Australian diplomats that Mr Guo’s detention was related to a visa matter.
Mr Zhou visited a detention centre in Beijing where several political activists and human rights lawyers were being held following a crackdown in the lead-up to the anniversary.
Only after he had presented his US passport to the detention centre and attempted to donate money to the imprisoned activists did the authorities realise who he was.
An hour after he returned to his hotel, police arrived and detained him, saying they had received complaints that he was using drugs.
They took him to a police station, where he was held for eight hours before being escorted to the airport and his flight back to the US.
Mr Zhou said the police officers were polite and courteous and seemed curious about his experience as a student leader 25 years ago.
The Communist party has wiped all mention of the protests and massacre from the history books, from public life and the internet. Most young people in China have no idea what happened in Beijing in 1989, when hundreds and perhaps thousands of people were killed as tanks and heavily armed combat troops barrelled into the city.
In the aftermath of the massacre, the government denounced the student demonstrators as “counter-revolutionary” instigators and published a most-wanted list of those it held responsible for the uprising.
Many people were executed or given hefty jail terms for their involvement in the two months of protests, but 15 of the 21 most wanted student leaders were able to escape China with the help of a CIA and MI6-supported operation code-named “yellowbird”.
Several of the former student leaders remain committed to the ideals they fought for in 1989 and Mr Zhou is no exception.
“The questions we student demonstrators raised in 1989 are still the most important unresolved issues facing modern China – such as freedom, justice, press freedom and public disclosure of government officials’ wealth and assets,” Mr Zhou told the Financial Times from San Francisco, where he continues his political activism.
Additional Reporting by Gu Yu
From:http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c77e3400-ec68-11e3-ab1b-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fworld_asia-pacific_china%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct&siteedition=intl#axzz33d6h4Vym