From hrichina@igc.apc.orgSun Aug 27 12:53:53 1995 Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 13:17:20 -0700 From: Human Rights in China Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org To: beijing-conf@ssi.edc.org, beijing95-l@netcom.com Subject: Ding Zilin Personal Testimony /* ---------- "Ding Zilin Personal Testimony" ---------- */ From: Human Rights in China THIS MESSAGE CONTAINS EXCERPTS FROM THE WRITINGS OF DETAINED CHINESE HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST DING ZILIN, INCLUDING THE TEXT OF A PETITION SUBMITTED BY DING AND OTHERS DEMANDING A FULL INVESTIGATION OF THE JUNE FOURTH 1989 MASSACRE. DING ZILIN Solace in Action: A Mother's Mission to Publicize the Truth Even before the last bullet was fired during the Beijing Massacre of 1989, the reality of what had happened became obscured by the politics surrounding the event. The individuals killed and wounded quickly became disputed statistics in debates over how many had died, where and how they had died, and whether the military crackdown was justified. But the search for the correct number of those who perished in the massacre is not merely an academic exercise. Each of those killed was someone's child, parent, husband, wife, grandparent, or friend. Ding Zilin, a professor at People's University, sought solace from the suffering caused by the death of her son--one of the first killed in the massacre--by taking action. Soon after the tragedy, she began collecting the names of the people killed and wounded in the crackdown and worked to build an informal support network to bring together the victims' families. Many have sympathized with her impulse to counter official disinformation on the June 4 massacre and have wanted to share their suffering with others. They have been hindered, however, by the pervasive fear of being identified with what the government labelled a "counterrevolutionary rebellion." In the excerpts of her writings included here, taken primarily from a statement she prepared for the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights of 1993--an event to which she was invited, but was unable to attend--Ding Zilin describes some of the people who were killed in the army's assault on Beijing. The pain for their families has yet to end, she notes, as the government has not allowed them to grieve in peace or addressed the needs of the people widowed and orphaned in those terrible days. In May of this year, Ding Zilin joined with the wives and mothers of other victims of the June 4 massacre in signing a petition calling on the government to repeal its assessment of the event and provide a full accounting of those wounded and killed. The text of this petition letter is included at the end of this posting. These materials have been translated by Human Rights in China. The full texts are available in HRIC's report "Fighting for their Rights: Chinese Women's Experiences Under Political Persecution." Chinese versions are widely available in Ding Zilin's published works or can be obtained through HRIC. * * * EXCERPTS FROM DING ZILIN'S WRITINGS ON HER EFFORTS TO REMEMBER THE VICTIMS OF THE BEIJING 1989 MASSACRE I am simply a Chinese intellectual and a mother who lost her son in the June Fourth massacre of 1989. Since the massacre, the Chinese government has talked constantly about respecting its citizens' "right to exist." Yet on June 4, 1989, guns and tanks deprived countless outstanding young Chinese men and women of their "right to exist" in a single night. This is nothing but hypocrisy. As the mother of a victim, there is no way for me to forget the boys and girls and men and women, including my own son, who died in pools of blood. I want the people of the world to know that they once lived in this world, that this world once belonged to them, and why and how they disappeared from it. The Killing Begins Late in the night of June 3, 1989, the West Road martial law troops came in from the western suburbs of Beijing along Wukesong and Cuiwei Roads, shooting and killing as they made their way east to the head of the bridge at Muxidi. There they were blocked by over ten thousand people. Just after 11 p.m., the sound of machine gun fire began again and my 17-year-old son, Jiang Jielian, a second-year student at People's University High School, was in the first group of people to fall. Earlier that evening, Jiang Jielian had seen the televised announcement that martial law troops were closing in and insisted on going to Tiananmen Square to help the students who were still there. My husband and I tried to stop him, telling him that it was too dangerous and that if anything were to happen to him, we would be left alone. But he insisted on going, replying that, "If all parents were as selfish as you, would the country or its people have any future?" He then took my red school badge, pinned it to his shirt, stuffed a couple of yuan and some change into his little wallet, and tried to console me by saying, "I'm just going to take a look; I'll be right back, don't worry. I'll call you from a public phone as soon as I get to Tiananmen." Patting the school badge pinned to his chest he said, "With this on they can't call me a 'hoodlum,' and the martial law troops won't harm me." I'd locked the front door to keep him from leaving, so he crawled out the window in the bathroom and ran off despite my protests. He left home at around 10 on the evening of June 3rd and rode toward the Square with a classmate. At Muxidi, the two met up with hoards of people. When the martial law troops opened fire, these two children thought they were shooting rubber bullets! His classmate later told us that as they tried to hide in a subway entrance, Jiang Jielian was shot in the back and his classmate was grazed by the bullet as it exited through his chest. Jiang Jielian was only able to say, "I think I've been hit," before he collapsed with blood pouring from his wound. Shot dead at around the same time was Hao Zhijing, 30, a science and technology policy and management researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He had returned from a visit to the United States in 1988 and had been married less than a year. He too was his parents' cherished only child. He was shot in the chest and taken by local citizens to Fuxing Hospital where he died. His family did not find his body until July 4. Also among the mass of bodies that fell one after another in the continuous spray of machine gun fire at Muxidi was Xiao Bo, an instructor in the Chemistry Department at Beijing University who had turned 27 that day. He had gone to Muxidi expressly to urge his students to return to school. Xiao Bo died leaving behind a pair of twins not yet 70 days old. Also brought down at the same time was 27-year-old Yuan Li, an engineer in the Electrical Machinery Department of the Beijing Machinery Industry Research Institute who had just received a visa to visit the United States. He was shot in the chest not long after leaving his home in Ganjiakou at 11 p.m. Soon afterward, his corpse was labelled "Unknown Body #2" by the Naval General Hospital and placed in storage until his family found where it was on June 24. Stored together with Yuan Li's corpse was "Unknown Body #3," later identified by his family as Wang Chao, 30, an employee of the Stone Corporation who had been married only a month. "Unknown Body #1" turned out to be 19-year-old Ye Weihang, a third-year student at Beijing High School Number 57 and student association chairman. He was shot in the right shoulder and chest at 2 a.m. on June 4, but did not die until he received a second shot, this time in the back of the head. 27-year-old Lu Chunlin, who entered the master's program of the Philosophy Department at People's University in 1986 and was the son of a southern Jiangsu farm family, was also shot at Muxidi. Just before he died, he used the last of his energy to give everything he was carrying with him to a passerby to let the university know he had died. As the troops charged toward Tiananmen, the number of sons and daughters of China stripped of their "right to exist" increased. Duan Changlong, a graduating senior majoring in applied chemistry at Qinghua University, had just found a job. His 46-year-old father had only this one beloved son. That evening, Duan left an experiment unfinished in the school laboratory and rode his bike from Houhaijia to the vicinity of the Palace of Nationalities at Xidan. There he came across the martial law troops blocked by the crowd. He pushed forward and was hit in the chest with a bullet. People took him to the nearby Postal College where he stopped breathing before receiving any medical care. Also dying alongside Duan Changlong at the same time in the Postal College Hospital was a 19-year-old girl, Zhang Jin. She was a student majoring in foreign trade at a vocational high school and was training to work at the International Trade Center. Seeing the gunfire and killing, Zhang Jin and her boyfriend had hidden in a small alleyway near the Palace of Nationalities, but they were unable to avoid the slaughter. Just past midnight, Zhang Jin was shot twice in the head and fell at her boyfriend's feet. She died shortly after being taken to the Postal College Hospital around 1 a.m., June 4. ... [PROFESSOR DING HERE GOES ON TO DESCRIBE DETAILS OF MANY OTHERS WHO WERE KILLED] The killing spree continues The argument has been made that the slaughter of June 3 and 4 was necessary to clear Tiananmen Square. Then why, I ask, did the indiscriminate killing of innocent people continue for several days after the martial law troops had already occupied the square? On or about June 5, Zhang Xianghong, a second-year student in the International Politics Department at People's University, went to the end of the alleyway near her home with her sister-in-law, as they were anxious about Zhang's brother who was going out. They were chasing behind him, calling for him to return home when Zhang was hit by a round of ammunition fired by the martial law troops. Zhang died instantly in the arms of her sister-in-law. An Ji, 31, of the Chinese Architectural Technique Research Center of the Construction Department and editor of the Rural Planning and Design Division's journal, Township Construction, was killed under similar circumstances. At a bit past 11 p.m. on the evening of June 7, An Ji and a group of friends were seeing off another friend to Yangfangdian. As they passed the Beijing Children's Hospital near Yuetan Park, martial law troops shouted at them to halt. An Ji and several other young men ran to hide and in a burst of gunfire, he and another man in his thirties surnamed Wang were hit and killed. Both of them left behind old mothers, wives, and young children. These young men and women are only a small number of the victims of June Fourth that I know of. Relatives of some victims, fearful of official pressure, are unwilling to reveal publicly the names and circumstances of the deaths of their loved ones and thus they bear an even greater pain. The June Fourth Massacre is already five years in the past and the dead are long gone, but what has it meant for the living parents, widows, and orphans? An epitaph on a tombstone in the Wan'an Public Cemetery west of Beijing reads: Crying in sorrow for my son who had not yet come of age abruptly left this world. Our family's star of hope suddenly fell from the sky. How is the God in Heaven so unfair to call away a dedicated youth and leave behind his parents in their old age? Our son was born on the seventh of July and ascended to heaven on the third of June. A brief short life unfortunate from beginning to end. The entire family is heartbroken forever bereft of happiness and laughter we erect this memorial in our grief. These words articulate the anguished cries of the families of those killed. For the relatives of these victims, there is no longer any laughter; the only thing left is pain and tears. One elderly couple who lost their cherished son wear expressions of indifference and seldom speak, but deep in their hearts they are uneasy. They have only one wish and so they pray that they can live a bit longer to see with their own eyes the day when the clouds will open and the fog will clear. The government has adopted a policy of forbidding discussion in order to make people forget June Fourth. With the passage of time, the warmth and solicitude of people around the families of victims grows increasingly sparse, and the longing for a lost loved one even more suffocating. There is one mother who has gradually grown quiet over these past five years. It is a fearful silence. She is unable to talk about the 19-year-old son she lost; she acts as though none of it ever happened, but in her heart she is suffering terribly and her whole personality seems to have been transformed. Another mother is so pained that she does not want to go on living. She is close to having a nervous breakdown. When she can no longer control herself, in the middle of the night she goes to an deserted area and cries and screams madly. There is another mother who normally restrains her sorrow, but at the Qingming grave-sweeping festival and on the anniversary of her son's death, she falls before his grave and cries ceaselessly. On these anniversaries, yet another mother is unable to stay in the house where her son once lived and walks aimlessly through the streets and alleyways unwilling to return to her home for long periods. One widow found it impossible to hold back her bitterness and hoped to meet others with whom she could share her pain. So once when she was attending to the grave of her husband, she quietly left her address on the funeral urns of others she did not know who had died in the same way. In this way she broke through her loneliness and helplessness. I suffered the same fate as these mothers and wives and endured many grim, sad days and nights after June Fourth. My spirit and health were seriously damaged and I suffered repeated bouts of heart trouble. When I could bear it no longer, I broke my silence on the eve of the second anniversary of June Fourth by agreeing to an interview with ABC Television in which I pointed out the errors of fact in Premier Li Peng's interpretation of the June Fourth incident. I paid a heavy price for this, bringing on more than a year of persecution. On the eve of the third anniversary of June Fourth, I was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and deprived of my job as a graduate student advisor. The government's response How did the Chinese government behave toward the families? A month after the massacre, the Chinese government-controlled Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po published a story saying that appropriate funeral arrangements had been made for those mistakenly killed in Beijing. Deputy Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Government Yu Xiaosong was quoted as saying that "the government is undertaking conscientious and careful arrangements" for their relatives and that they would be given compensation of between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan. Yu indicated that the children of victims would be supported by the government until they reached 18. Despite repeated requests, however, no government official has ever announced the official verdict on whether my son was mistakenly wounded or was a "rioter." One mother I know of angrily requested that the authorities list her deceased daughter as a "rioter," saying that that was better than just leaving the cause of her death completely unclear. Of all the relatives of victims I know of, not one has obtained an official conclusion on their loved one's cause of death or received any compensation. During the political study and investigation campaign which followed the June Fourth Massacre, the CCP political department in each work unit pressured the families of victims to take part in "study" sessions to raise their understanding, to maintain unanimity with the central government, and to acknowledge that "pacifying the uprising" was a reasonable action. Some families were forbidden to make their status as relatives of victims public and were prohibited from accepting press interviews under threat of being expelled from their deceased relative's work unit housing. Other families of those killed and wounded have been put under supervision and control. Neighborhood committees monitor their meetings with outsiders, foreigners in particular, and their incoming and outgoing mail. Some families have been interrogate frequently. Every year around the Qingming Festival and June Fourth, such surveillance becomes especially severe by harassing the families and infringing upon their freedom of movement. When the families are sweeping the graves of their relatives at Qingming or June Fourth, a great number of military police are sent out to "maintain order"; legitimate memorial activities are restricted and a threatening atmosphere pervades the cemetery. Some survivors, particularly widows and orphans, have had to seek help from the leaders of the work units where those killed and wounded had been employed. They were told that if the family signed a statement stating that their relative had died of natural causes, they would then receive 800 yuan in compensation, but otherwise they would not receive a cent. As for the money for raising orphans, even the most fair-minded of leaders have provided only 50 yuan a month. For a while, good-hearted friends provided financial help for the orphans and widows. But as time passed, it became difficult to continue this support, and now they have been virtually forgotten. Five years ago our innocent loved ones were stripped of their right to exist by machine guns and tanks. During these five years, we have suffered from unimaginable material, spiritual, and physical pain. We have lost the right to enjoy a normal life and lost the right to express our opinions and viewpoints. Human rights, which should be universally enjoyed by all human beings, remain a luxury in present-day China, especially for those of us who are relatives of the victims of June Fourth. * * * * * TEXT OF A PETITION LETTER DRAFTED BY DING ZILIN and other relatives of victims of the June 4, 1989 massacre and submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China on May 26, 1995: We are a group of relatives of victims of the "June 4" 1989 incident, the majority of whom are the mothers or wives of a loved one killed in that incident. For the past six years, we have endured grief and suffered bitterly, waiting patiently for the government to give an honest and responsible explanation of the killing of our innocent relatives. But to this day, the government has turned a deaf ear to our request. There is an old saying in China that goes: "Human life is of the utmost importance." Yet six years ago the government employed machine guns and tanks to murder people on the streets of the capital Beijing, and then hastily put a close on this bloody tragedy that shocked the world by calling their actions "suppressing a riot." This is something that we absolutely cannot accept. Six years is not a short period of time; we cannot go on endlessly waiting. In accordance with the rights entrusted to citizens by the Constitution, we request that: 1. The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress form a special "June 4" investigation committee to undertake an independent and fair inquiry into the entire incident and make the truth known; 2. The findings of this inquiry, including a complete list of the names and numbers of those who died in the incident, be made known to all the people of China; 3. Out of a responsibility to history and to the dead, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress instruct the relevant government agencies to provide a full accounting of the incident to the victims' families in accordance with legal procedure. We submit our requests to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for an appropriate decision. We appeal to all the people of China to have compassion for the fates of the families of the victims of "June 4." We anxiously await a response. Signed: Ding Zilin Zhan Xianling Li Xuewen Zhou Shuzhuang Xu Jue Liu Meihua Huang Jinping Ma Xueqin Liu Xiuchen Zhang Shusen Zhang Yanqiu Tian Shuling Jia Fuquan Zhou Yan Hou Shuzhen Yuan Shumin Zhu Yuxian Shen Guifang Du Dongxu Feng Youxiang Meng Shuzhen Guo Liying Lu Masheng You Weijie Han Shuxiang Yin Min Meng Shuying --------------------------------------------------------- HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA is an independent, non-political, non-profit organization founded by scholars and students from the People's Republic of China. HRIC's work involves documenting and publicizing human rights abuses in China, informing Chinese people about international human rights standards and the mechanisms by which they are enforced, and assisting those persecuted and imprisoned in the PRC for non-violent exercise of their fundamental rights and freedoms. HRIC publishes the quarterly journal CHINA RIGHTS FORUM. 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