June 4th, 2008 6/4
today is june the 4th. i forgot the weight of this date until walking past the lake in the dark, and coming across a small procession bearing an amnesty international banner.
they held bunches of blooming roses and candles, and i stared for a few moments before crossing the busy street. they looked back as well, but with an easy gaze - who knows what i might appear to them, indeterminate asian, chinese maybe, and i was heading in the general direction of the embassy too…
they were walking the route under the bridge, past the chinese embassy’s back gates, around the river inlet, quietly.
this year has been crazy. i’m not at all convinced with the fervour surrounding the beijing olympics, even though the normally protest crazy hong kong has even been taken into it as well, now less suspicious of its once removed mother country. they are now happy to yell, “go china!” and wave red and yellow flags as if they had known her all their life - instead of the last eleven years.
according to an article in the standard, the 6/4 protests may be getting smaller. but nothing changes what happened, even if the toll in sichuan has distracted people from this date, even if there are smaller acts of political freedom occuring. neither does the nationalistic streak on display all around the world by chinese erase history. let’s hope we can use the opportunity so that this will never happen again.
yesterday on my way home after buying some chinese buns to eat, i saw the banner above russell square. curious to find out what it was about, i skipped the trip to the antique store and headed in that direction.
there was a small gathering of people there to hear people talk about the circumstances surrounding the 4th of june. i am still very emotional about these events, so i sat there awkwardly on the short steps until they finished speaking. later i grabbed some of the newspapers they had on a table.
it wasn’t until i came home that i read the epoch times paper, entitled ‘nine commentaries on the communist party’. it really dulled whatever i was feeling, because in the introduction alone, it contained the accusation “among (the ccp’s) unending list of crimes, the vilest must be its persecution of the falun gong”.
who is to say that it is worse than tianamen, or the great famine, or the cultural revolution (an estimated ten million died as a result of the latter, and an estimated thirty million in the great famine alone)? what is the purpose of making such a value judgement between the atrocities?
while i don’t doubt the terrible things that the ccp has done, the way the paper states its claims doesn’t wash well with me. while well referenced, it uses overly emotive language which is less about facts than riling up anti-ccp sentiment.
and logic such as this:
“the chinese traditionally believe in the unity of heaven and human beings. laozi said in tao-te ching, ‘man follows the earth, the earth follows heaven, heaven follows the dao, and the dao follows what is natural’. human beings and nature exist within a harmonious relationship in the continuous cosmos.
the communist party is a kind of being. however, it opposes nature, heaven, earth and mankind. it is an evil spectre against the universe.”
for me, this is too much like doctrination. using culturally specific forms of explanation, and failing to question them, in my western frame of mind at least, is not cogent.
besides those problems with argument, i began to suspect that the epoch times is either written, funded or owned by members of falun gong. their about page sheds no further light, which is understandable, since they are a group opposed to the ccp and exposing themselves runs a great risk.
then i remembered that an australian caucasian man at the rally mentioned that his family continued to be persecuted by the ccp, and this may have been because he was married to somebody who was a practioner of falun gong.
and the content of the speeches was more to do with the way the party had eroded life, religion and rational thought in china, and the reasons why the ccp had to end.
it ended with each speaker denouncing the party publicly, usually mentioning the ‘nine commentaries’ as a reason.
in hindsight, i was disappointed with this approach, as i believe it should have been a day to remember the events that occured at tianamen, and not for a group to push their own agenda, however quietly.
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