Zhou Fengsuo, 56, from X’ian, China, was there on June 4, 1989, when the Chinese government shot at protestors on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square during a student protest he helped lead. Back then, he was a 22-year-old Physics student at Tsinghua University and eager for democratic change. Now, as the Executive Director of Human Rights in China, he dedicates his life to fighting for freedom in China. He appears friendly and light-hearted but there is a sadness in his face as he remembers how the Chinese authorities brought violence to the peaceful protest. Bearing witness, he says, is crucial given that China still bans any mentioning of the event.
Speaking over video call from his home in Brooklyn, New York, he says: “I could hear gunshots all the time, from every direction” during the Tiananmen Square protests held on June 3-4 1989, remembered as the Tiananmen Square Massacre by the West. According to Amnesty International, the massacre claimed the lives of “hundreds if not thousands of unarmed peaceful pro-democracy protesters” killed on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) orders. Chinese officials claimed that more than 3,000 civilians were wounded and over 200, including 36 college students, died during the riot. However, it is likely that many more than this were killed. The protestors were peacefully calling for political reform. Thirty-five years on, people from China and Hong Kong are continuing to fight against the Chinese government despite the threat of arrest and incarceration.
The causes of the protests were complex and resulted from a series of failures from the Chinese government. After inflation and government corruption hit China in the mid-1980s, students began demonstrating for individual rights and political freedom in late 1986. This led the CCP to suppress what they called “bourgeoise liberalism, such as freedom of speech. Hu Yaobang, who had been the CCP general secretary since 1980 and had encouraged democratic reforms, was forced to resign in 1987. Yaobang died in April 1989 and soon became a martyr of political liberalisation in China. Tens of thousands of students gathered on Tiananmen Square on the day of his funeral (April 22) to “draw up a list of demands broadly centred on political and economic reforms, but also including calls for an end to corruption, censorship and limits on basic rights”. This led to similar gatherings occurring on Tiananmen Square over the commencing several weeks with wide public support, to which the government issued stern warnings.
Fired up by the prospect of political change, Fengsuo and thousands of other young people ignored the government’s threats. “I was definitely hoping for political change, especially, I wanted the freedom of speech, freedom of the press and I wanted rule of law,” says Fengsuo.
In the face of youthful defiance, the CCP sent heavily armed troops and hundreds of vehicles onto Tiananmen Square on June 3-4, and the killing began. “With millions of people on Tiananmen Square, it felt like change was in reach, like we were almost there, says Fengsuo. “But as the CCP’s troops began cracking down on the protest, I saw that everything changed. It was like Beijing changed from a city of people coming together into a war. There was smoke, army tanks, and bullets wounding people. It was beyond my comprehension. I just couldn’t understand why that was happening. It was brutal and abrupt, and from then on, my life changed forever.”
Following the military crackdown, the Chinese authorities hunted down those involved in the demonstrations, detaining them, torturing them, and imprisoning them after unfair trials, with many being charged with ‘counter-revolutionary crimes. Among those arrested was Fengsuo. As a leader of the protests, he was put on China’s most-wanted list and was turned in by his sister and her husband to the authorities, causing him to be sent to the highest security prison in China, which is normally reserved for government officials, for a year. “We were treated worse than ordinary criminals,” says Fengsuo. “I was handcuffed for three months, all the time, non-stop, every moment. For me, that was like the worst of it. Initially, I was shocked at becoming a prisoner despite being a student at a prestige university. I was hungry most of the time, and it was dark and damp in the prison cell, and we were being watched all the time,“ he says.
Fengsuo was eventually released from prison due to public pressure and then moved to the US in 1994, having always wanted to move there, where he attended business school at Chicago University and started his organisation, Human Rights China, which promotes fundamental rights and freedoms and provides solidarity for rights defenders and their families. He has made it his life’s work to ensure that the Tiananmen Square massacre is never forgotten. He says: “Because the government are erasing this memory, it is my great honour to speak out on behalf of the victims and their families.” Fengsuo’s siblings (three brothers and one sister) and their families still live in China, but he cannot contact them as the CCP is trying to harass them to get information about him. His parents passed away before he left China.
Fengsuo is not alone. Since the massacre, activists in mainland China who have commemorated those who were killed have been detained or charged with “subversion” or “picking quarrels”. This has also happened to anyone who has called for the release of prisoners or criticised the government for their actions during the Tiananmen crackdown. Today, the government has still never accepted responsibility for human rights violations during and after the crackdown or held any perpetrator accountable. According to Amnesty International, “With each year that passes, justice becomes ever more elusive.” However, despite these bans and threats and intimidation from the government, relatives of victims, survivors and human rights defenders have joined an alliance known as the Tiananmen Mothers. The Tiananmen Mothers have “collected their own tally of fatalities and call every year for the government to provide a full account and acknowledgement”.
Despite the banning of commemoration of the massacre in mainland China, hundreds of thousands of people joined a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park every year on June 4 from 1990 to 2019 to remember those killed. However, following Beijing’s imposing of the National Security Law (NSL) in Hong Kong in 2020, the vigil was banned. This law has criminalised peaceful protest. An Amnesty International spokesperson explains that in Hong Kong, “the censorship of mass media, education materials, and cultural media like films, books, and art has reached a new high level”. “Almost no protests against the government can be done on the streets or in public spaces, and even the online space is scrutinised by the authorities by prosecuting people publishing social media posts which cross the 'red line' of the government,” they say. The spokesperson explains that any connection with overseas activists being wanted by the government, including financial relationships or collaboration on human rights work, is now a crime in Hong Kong.
“Hong Kong now is just becoming another city in Mainland China,” says Hong Kong-born Christopher Mung, 52, founder of Hong Kong Labour Rights Monitor, speaking over video call from his home in London. Mung was a 17-year-old secondary school student in Hong Kong when the massacre occurred. “I saw the students and citizens in Beijing protest for democracy and freedom and sacrifice for what they believe with their shared values. I was so touched, and then, after seeing their impact, I practiced my studies on their ambition to continue their unfinished activism. That was the beginning of my journey to the social movement,” he says.
Mung is now dedicating his life to fighting for human rights in Hong Kong and continues to commemorate the massacre. He says: “We are losing the freedom and human rights we used to enjoy. It seems that June 4 has become a forbidden word and people even fear remembering the event under the current political suppression and that is very terrible. I feel very sad because Hong Kong is a place I love so much. We used to enjoy different kinds of freedom, freedom of speech, association, and assembly. Although we didn’t have full democracy, we could still enjoy these different kinds of freedom.” He explains that “the situation in Hong Kong has been getting “worse and worse”. He says: “We have a deterioration of freedom and human rights. The political suppression in Hong Kong is unprecedented. After the handover in 1997, we were promised high autonomy according to the basic law.”
Before the handover of Hong Kong to China from Britain in 1997, Hong Kong was under the concept of one country, two systems, which was intended to help integrate Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau with sovereign China while preserving their unique political and economic systems. However, since the handover, Hong Kong’s autonomy has virtually disappeared. Civil society has been dismantled by the National Security Law and trade Unions have been forced to disband. “The status of Hong Kong has changed from ‘one country two systems’ to a state of being fully controlled by the Chinese government, so after 35 years, nothing is better than before,” says Mung.
Despite this, however, activists in Hong Kong have continued to try to commemorate the incident and fight for freedom. Many Hong Kong activists, including Mung, have been arrested or threatened with arrest. Mung moved to London three years ago after a warrant was issued for his arrest, and he was put on Hong Kong’s most wanted list for his trade union activities. In the UK, he started his organisation, Hong Kong Labour Monitor, to continue his fight for humanitarian rights in Hong Kong. He says that he can no longer speak to his family back home because they would be harassed by CCP authorities.
The long fight for freedom from the CCP has moved from China to Hong Kong, but now Hong Kong is on the front line. According to Amnesty International, “Since 2019, more than 10000 people have been arrested, and almost 3000 people have been prosecuted or imprisoned, including Jimmy Lai, Chow Hang Tung, pan-democratic legislative councillors and thousands of protesters and activists.”
“For many people in China and Hong Kong, even a simple gesture can lead to severe repression,” says Fengsuo. For example, the artist Sanmu Chen was arrested earlier this month in Hong Kong just for appearing to write “8964” in the air, which refers to the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Fengsuo says that Hong Kong has changed beyond recognition in the past five years. “It’s becoming a prison under rule in China. The crackdowns are very severe, and most of the activists are under house arrest and being watched by the police,” he says. He explains that he recently heard that a person was arrested simply for retweeting his organisation’s post about the Tiananmen commemoration.
Now, 35 years on, people in the UK, Europe, Canada, and the US are holding rallies to commemorate and fight for democracy in China and Hong Kong. On June 2 of this year, Amnesty International held a rally in London along with Hong Kong Labour Rights Monitor, Democracy for Hong Kong, and China Deviants to commemorate the massacre. Mung and Fengsuo spoke at the event. During the rally, Mung explained that what happened 35 years ago is “not history because the regime that killed so many people will impact China’s future because they got away with murder, they believe ‘if we can get away with murder, we can get away with anything’. They do not believe in the rhetoric in human rights.”
Amnesty International agree with Mung and say that they held the event because the “political states of Hong Kong and China are now at their most oppressive”. They say: “There is no dissenting voice on political rights in the institutions in Hong Kong or China. The survival of civil society organisations is at risk. International human rights organisations like Amnesty cannot appear in China and were forced to disband in Hong Kong in 2021, making it difficult to directly support the human rights movement on the ground, and any collaboration with these organisations can be regarded as collusion with foreign forces under the NSL.”
Fengsuo thinks that human rights in China have only diminished. He argues: “China today is a very strange hybrid of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In many areas, its control is worse than the Soviet Union, but it is also showing a very evil efficiency just like Nazi Germany on the rise.” He explains that China “are very good at data collection and artificial intelligence,” which they are using to control people.
There are fears from the West that China has plans to take over the world using its advances in technology and military powers. Fengsuo explains that China is also a very good producer of electric vehicles and drones “which are crucial to a future war”. “I think that they are a much bigger threat to China and the rest of the world than Nazi Germany was because Nazi Germany was more constrained because of the border, but today, because of commerce and the internet, the CCP’s regime is everywhere,” he says. “The CCP is watching everyone in the world through technology and have a kind of profile for everyone and their technology can hack any system, any profile, and any institution in the world.” The US government and the West have expressed fears that China will try and invade Taiwan, a former Chinese territory, like they did with Hong Kong. “That is why people are so fearful. We must confront the CCP’s regime; we cannot let it grow. They’ve done it to Hong Kong, and they’ll do it to Taiwan, and they won’t stop there,” says Fengsuo.
While Mung and Fengsuo both say that they enjoy the freedom of living in the UK and US, they will continue to keep fighting for freedom in their home countries. They both cherish the dream of returning home. “I am not allowed to go back home because of the political impact. I will be arrested and sent to prison if I go back to Hong Kong,” says Mung. “So, I cannot go back until we achieve democracy; until there is no more dictatorship in Hong Kong. I miss Hong Kong so much; I lived there since I was born.” Fengsuo says he was deported when he visited Tiananmen Square ten years ago, but this hasn’t stopped him from hoping that he will return one day. He says: “I like the United States, I love the freedom here both politically and economically but of course, I love China as well and I wish I could go back freely but I wouldn’t go back in silence. I will go back when there’s democracy.”
Comments