Sunday, 05 June 2011
The image of Tank Man--taken by an American Associated Press photographer --has come to symbolize peaceful resistance in the 20th Century. (File photo)
The image--taken by an American Associated Press photographer --has come to symbolize peaceful resistance in the 20th Century.
I admit there’s a personal element involved (when is it not about me?).
In 1981, Tiananmen Square was my very my own playground as I lived a stone’s throw away from it. Against the majestic backdrop of the Forbidden City—which came alive during the three-day events of Children’s Day in the beginning of June each year—Tiananmen Square came to represent Beijing, home.
It was where we went to “hang out” after our homework in the spring, summer and fall (winters being too harsh), though memory fails me as to what exactly my two younger sisters, and I did given that the language barrier was huge.
This was real communist China, prior to opening its doors to the world so foreigners were viewed with suspicion but thankfully children were not so whatever flashes of recall I have, they are images of us running around with Chinese children.
Eight years later, I was at summer school in New York, an idealistic teenager when the Tank Man’s images were relayed on TV and in print—standing in front of the tanks, trying to negotiate with the men inside, navigating his way back in front of them when they appeared to move again.
Our beloved playground had been turned into a battlefield of gore.
Whatever naïveté I had was pretty much taken that day—but the image of the man stayed because he was one of us, and I don’t mean to claim myself as Chinese (though if you’ll have me I’d like it very much) as much as I mean to say he was one amongst us.
After an intense facedown with the tanks, two people took the Tank Man away, into the crowds and he hasn’t been seen in public since.
There are essentially two theories about him, with varying degrees of sub-theories behind each. One, that he was taken away by secret police amongst the crowd of protestors and executed—some say two weeks later, some say months later.
The other story is that he was pulled away by concerned citizens and he has since disappeared, but is alive and in hiding. He has only been identified once by the British newspaper “Express” as a 19-year-old student who was charged with “public hooliganism” but Chinese authorities have rejected those claims.
Fast-forward to 22 years later, and the man is not forgotten. On June 4, 150,000 people attended a candlelight vigil to mark the protests at Tiananmen Square in Hong Kong and called on China to move forward with reforms, bring democracy, release dissidents, remove firewalls, etc.
Do the demands not sound like words we’ve heard all this year?
Public discussion of the events in 1989 is still banned in China but the calls for reform have not died down. The fight for change is far from over despite authorities efforts to crackdown on dissidents—and what’s of particular note, is the apparent heavy handedness with which it is has been done since the Arab uprising began this year. Hundreds of dissidents, bloggers, lawyers, activists have been questioned, detained or just disappeared since the Arab Uprising ostensibly to suppress anything remotely similar occurring in China.
So, you see, the Tank Man hasn’t been forgotten, nor has his sole act of courage been relegated to the archives of collective memory. His spirit lives on—despite concerted efforts by authorities to erase his existence—and he reminds that it is always begins with one person.
(Muna Khan, Editor of Al Arabiya English, can be reached at muna.khan@mbc.net)
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