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Tiananmen activists gather in Japan to pressure Beijing
by Staff Writers
Tokyo (AFP) May 30, 2014


Tiananmen leader: US didn't care about crackdown
Washington (AFP) May 30, 2014 - An exiled leader of the Tiananmen Square protests deplored Friday the US stance 25 years ago, saying the ambassador confided to her that Washington didn't "care" about the crackdown.

Chai Ling, who was commander-in-chief of the students agitating for democracy in Beijing, said that she had hoped the United States would intervene as Chinese troops crushed the uprising on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

"We stood at Tiananmen Square until 6:00 am in the morning. We were hoping Americans would come to help us, and America never came," Chai told a congressional hearing ahead of the 25th anniversary of the uprising.

Chai, who escaped China in a cargo box to Hong Kong, France and eventually the United States, said that she spoke to the US ambassador at the time, James Lilley, of the crackdown after he left Beijing.

"I said, 'Sir, why? Why did America not come? And he said, off the record, 'They do not care.' I was heartbroken, but that was the unfortunate truth," Chai said.

Chai said that she also met then vice president Dan Quayle and that he apologized for US inaction.

"But that is not enough to represent who America is supposed to be -- that is One Nation Under God," said Chai, who has embraced Christianity.

Then president George H.W. Bush, a former ambassador to Beijing, imposed limited sanctions on China over the crackdown but secretly sent senior officials to reassure supreme leader Deng Xiaoping.

Lilley, who died in 2009, wrote in a memoir that he deplored the Tiananmen Square violence but that it was important for the United States to maintain relations with China and to encourage the growing power to open to the world.

Lilley also wrote that the approach paid "personal dividends" for him as China intervened when Saddam Hussein's Iraq plotted to kill him during the first Gulf War.

Hundreds of people died as Chinese troops cleared out central Beijing of protesters, with some estimates putting the death toll at more than 1,000.

Another student leader, Zhou Fengsuo, told Friday's hearing that he saw 30 students' bodies at Fuxing Hospital's bicycle shed.

Zhou, who now works as a financial analyst in the United States, called for Washington to step up funding for technologies to break online censorship in China, where authorities censor any mention of the Tiananmen movement.

"The life of the communist regime depends on controlling the Internet and blocking access of Chinese citizens to the outside world," Zhou said.

Dozens of pro-democracy activists gathered in Japan Friday to call for global pressure on Beijing, days ahead of the 25th anniversary marking the brutal crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests.

"There used to be legitimacy in the Chinese government that was based on an ideal. But since the 1989 crackdown, there is no such a thing," Wu'er Kaixi, one of the leaders of the ill-fated protest, said in the meeting.

"The Chinese Communist party has been ruling people with fear," he told activists from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia and other regions.

The meeting opened a three-day event in Tokyo comprising symposiums and a demonstration aimed at drumming up support for their movement, ahead of the June 4 anniversary.

Wu'er Kaixi, who lives in self-imposed exile in Taiwan, became a celebrity when he interrupted China's then-premier Li Peng -- regarded as the mastermind of the Tiananmen operation -- during a televised meeting between student leaders and politicians in May 1989.

A member of the Uighur ethnic minority, Wu'er Kaixi was number two on the government's "most-wanted" list of student protesters following the military crackdown, which left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead.

China's present-day leaders know the nation's astonishing economic and military transformation means Western nations are reluctant to challenge their authoritarianism, said Wu'er Kaixi.

"I beg citizens of foreign countries, please put more pressure on China over its human rights record. At least do not stand on the wrong side," he said.

Chen Pokong, who helped spread the protest movement to southern China, said Japan should not be afraid to speak out on human rights.

"Japan should be a role model in showing a democratic value," said Chen, who now lives in the United States. "To me Japan is too worried about harming its relations with China."

Activists said the situation in China has worsened since 1989.

Hu Yuan-Hui, associate dean of National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan, said fear is widespread among journalists in mainland China as well as in Taiwan, over violent attacks by unidentified criminals.

Li Song, director of the Japan branch of the Federation for a Democratic China, told AFP: "Despite some freedom of expression seen with the Internet, such as in Weibo (China's Twitter-like microblog platform), we don't know what constitutes a red line for the Chinese authorities."

"Journalists or activists are suddenly attacked or arrested for unknown reasons," he said.

The meeting was a rare opportunity for pro-democracy activists to gather in Japan, where people show only modest interest in human rights issues abroad as compared with the West, he said.

"Japan is a very important base for our pro-democracy movement," Wu'er Kaixi told AFP, despite tensions between the two countries over disputed islands.

"Democracy should not be based on nationalism," he said, it "should be based on the recognition that it is a universal value."

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