Category Archives: Resistance

Tiananmen Square, China: Remember

CNN: Tiananmen Square timeline

April 15, 1989 – Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party leader, dies. Hu had worked to move China toward a more open political system and had become a symbol of democratic reform.

April 18, 1989 – Thousands of mourning students march through the capital to Tiananmen Square, calling for a more democratic government. In the weeks that follow, thousands of people join the students in the square to protest against China’s Communist rulers.

May 13, 1989 – More than 100 students begin a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square. The number increases to several thousand over the next few days.

May 19, 1989 – A rally at Tiananmen Square draws an estimated 1.2 million people. General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhao Ziyang, appears at the rally and pleads for an end to the demonstrations.

May 19, 1989 – Premier Li Peng imposes martial law.

June 1, 1989 – China halts live American news telecasts in Beijing, including CNN. Reporters are prohibited from photographing or videotaping any of the demonstrations or Chinese troops.

June 2, 1989 – A reported 100,000 people attend a concert in Tiananmen Square by singer Hou Dejian, in support of the demonstrators.

June 4, 1989 – At about 1 a.m., Chinese troops reach Tiananmen Square. Throughout the day, Chinese troops fire on civilians and students, ending the demonstrations. An official death toll has never been released.

June 5, 1989 – An unidentified man stands alone in the street, blocking a column of Chinese tanks. He remains there for several minutes before being pulled away by onlookers.

History.com

Tiananmen Square History

While the events of 1989 now dominate global coverage of Tiananmen Square, the site has long been an important crossroads within the city of Beijing. It was named for the nearby Tiananmen, or “Gate of Heavenly Peace,” and marks the entrance to the so-called Forbidden City. The location took on added significance as China shifted from an emperor-led political culture to one that was governed by the Communist Party. . . .

On the 20th anniversary of the massacre [June 2009], the Chinese government prohibited journalists from entering Tiananmen Square and blocked access to foreign news sites and social media.

Still, thousands attended a memorial vigil in honor of the anniversary in Hong Kong. Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the event, in 2019, New York-based Human Rights Watch published a report detailing reported arrests in China of those associated with the protests.

The 1989 events at Tiananmen Square have also been highly censored on China’s tightly-controlled internet. According to a survey released in 2019 by the University of Toronto and the University of Hong Kong, more than 3,200 words referencing the massacre had been censored.

Tiananmen Square Censorship

It wasn’t until 2006 that Yu Dongyue, a journalist arrested for throwing paint at a portrait of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square during the protests, was released from prison.

On the 20th anniversary of the massacre [2009], the Chinese government prohibited journalists from entering Tiananmen Square and blocked access to foreign news sites and social media.

A famous statue at the University of Hong Kong marking the Tiananmen Square massacre was removed late on Wednesday [December 22, 2021].

The statue showed piled-up corpses to commemorate the hundreds – possibly thousands – of pro-democracy protesters killed by Chinese authorities in 1989.

The “Pillar of Shame” Tiananmen Memorial at Hong Kong University – officials removed it in December 2021

It was one of the few remaining public memorials in Hong Kong commemorating the incident.

Its removal comes as Beijing has increasingly been cracking down on political dissent in Hong Kong.

The city used to be one of few places in China that allowed public commemoration of the Tiananmen Square protests – a highly sensitive topic in the country. . . .

“The dissident Fang Lizhi, holed up at the United States Embassy in Beijing, in 1990, to avoid arrest after the Tiananmen crackdown, composed an essay titled “The Chinese Amnesia.”

“About once each decade, the true face of history is thoroughly erased from the memory of Chinese society,” he wrote . . . .

“This is the objective of the Chinese Communist policy of Forgetting History. In an effort to coerce all of society into a continuing forgetfulness, the policy requires that any detail of history that is not in the interests of the Chinese Communists cannot be expressed in any speech, book, document, or other medium.”

New Yorker, 10/02/23

Flashbacks! I’m Having 1967 Anti-Draft Flashbacks! From Vietnam to Jerusalem

Sheesh! Did somebody slip one (or two) of those “new” cure-all psychedelic pills into my low-sodium tomato juice??

Must have, because I’m having wild and weird hallucinations from —I don’t know— 1967?  They’re full of long-haired young men shouting slogans against the draft.

I can tell they’re hallucinations because other than the hair, the protesters are dressed all alike in the most un-hip getup ever:  not a tie-dye in sight, nary a scrap of paisley, and no roaches anywhere. Maybe it’s a back alley scene from the Haight-Ashbury?

Also, the slogans seem to be aimed at overthrowing the government, but they’re all in some exotic local slang that, from the accents, sounds kind of —  kind of, like, maybe, Hebrew?

I know I’m delirious because I heard one of the longhairs talking English to some TV guy, and he  insisted they’re gonna make the revolution so they can all be free to — what?? Study Tarot? “Say what?” I asked. “Dude, like, the Age of Aquarius is so over.” He just grunted and flipped me off.

I must really be having a bum trip, I figured . . . .

Continue reading Flashbacks! I’m Having 1967 Anti-Draft Flashbacks! From Vietnam to Jerusalem

AFSC: When the Slides Went Awry, And The Key Questions Weren’t Asked . . .

Brian Blackmore

Last month I attended two presentations by the new AFSC Director of Quaker Engagement, Brian Blackmore, at Durham and Chapel Hill Meetings here in North Carolina.

Blackmore, just a year in the job, is the successor to Lucy Duncan, a longtime AFSC staffer who was unceremoniously fired in early 2022 when she tried to start a staff uprising to stop a major internal reorganization. Continue reading AFSC: When the Slides Went Awry, And The Key Questions Weren’t Asked . . .

Could Drafting Ultra-OrthodoxYouth Bring Down Israel’s Government?

It’s a venerable Jewish joke: a Jew falls off a ship, in mid-ocean, and swims to an uninhabited island. Years later, his SOS signal is spotted. When rescuers arrive, they find he has managed to construct three small buildings from flotsam and jetsam: a small cabin, and two identical synagogues.

“Why two?” He was asked. The answer is immediate:

This one,” he points to the right “is where I go to pray each Shabbos.”

”And the other?”

He snorts. “Why do you ask? That’s the one I wouldn’t be caught dead in.”

Intra-communal controversy and sectarianism are persistent features of Jewish populations, and in this respect, the state of Israel is no exception. And the divide between a strongly Jewish-identified but non-observant majority and a rapidly growing ultra-orthodox minority, known as haredim, is a continuing source of tension.
Continue reading Could Drafting Ultra-OrthodoxYouth Bring Down Israel’s Government?

What am I Missing? Some Burning Questions

[Note: These days, I don’t get out as much as I used to: age, ailments, etc.  That means I don’t keep up well as I once did.

So I may be missing some stuff, and I hope somebody will catch me up.  

This anti-LGBTQ news from Ghana and Burundi (and Kenya & Uganda) is really tough. And Quaker groups have connections there, and in that region, some long-running.

So, they’ve gotta be taking this on, right?

They must be working to protect LGBTQ Friends (& non-Quakes too), of course?

Good Samaritan and all that great  Bible stuff? Don’t they still teach that all the time? Continue reading What am I Missing? Some Burning Questions