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Tiananmen, 15 Years OnWhere Are Some of the “Most Wanted” Participants Today?
“Tiananmen was the beginning of the end of the communist camp. It was a wake-up call to Chinese inside and outside China. There were two goals, a free market system and a democratic political system. The market system had to be speeded up or China would have exploded. And although people don’t speak out, they are building a bigger democratic base. Democracy and human rights have become not just a new concept, but a real and common value.” —May 2004 Feng Congde became active in the pro-democracy movement on April 15, 1989, the day former premier Hu Yaobang died. Mourning students, who considered the ousted liberal Chinese Communist Party general secretary a hero, were quick to use his death to push their demands. At the time, Feng was a third-year graduate student at the Beijing University Remote Sensing Institute working on his thesis, “Expert System on Satellite Image Processing.” His scholarship to Boston University’s PhD program already in hand, Feng had expected to defend his thesis on June 12, the same day his name appeared on “Wanted List 1: The 21 Beijing Student Leaders.” In Tiananmen Square where the students massed, Feng first assumed the post of president of the Student Union of Beijing Universities, and later became one of three deputy commanders of student headquarters. Feng described the scene in Tiananmen Square the early morning of June 4, 1989, when it became clear that the government was about to crack down. Some 3,000 to 5,000 students were massed around the Monument to the People’s Heroes, “the center of the center,” he called it. “It was 4:30 in the morning, two to three hours before dawn. The lights had been turned off. It was a dangerous, nervous urgent time.” Feng explained that it was his duty to help the students to a unified decision––stay or leave the Square. Obviously the only possibility was a voice vote. Yes, we stay and maybe die, or we leave. At the same time as the students were deciding their own fate, four intellectuals were negotiating with the army. “They could advise us,” Feng said, “but they could not decide for us.” Feng said the student vote sounded about even to him, but based on what he heard and his own analysis of the vote, he made the decision to leave. To this day, he said, “I feel guilty about those workers and civilians who died for us, but I felt that if the students lived they could be seeds for the future.” The students filed out of the Square in orderly fashion through a narrow pathway between two lines of soldiers. Before they had gone very far, several tanks rushed toward the middle of the student line and the first tear gas bombs went off. It was 6:20 a.m. At least two students were killed and several wounded. According to Feng, “There was no way to keep order.” Feng and several others rushed ahead to see what the danger might be. The street was eerily empty, he said, until he came to what he called “a scene of hatred,” four soldiers lying dead in the street. When he tried to help, some thirty civilians rushed in seemingly from no place, threatening to beat him if he dared to remove the bodies or help in any way. As he understood it, “These soldiers had orders to kill, but they were victims, too.” Feng explained that if it hadn’t been for a group of 100 qi gong practitioners, including policemen, high government officials, and ordinary workers, whom they happened to meet as they fled, he and his then wife Chai Ling would never have been able to survive ten months in hiding followed by escape. As a result of that experience Feng re-thought his interests. He has just completed his dissertation in the religious science department at the Sorbonne. It is entitled “Chinese Medical Cosmology According to the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon.” He earns his living through computer-related work. More Profiles:
| Reports Nipped in the Bud: The Suppression of the China Democracy Party Slamming the Door on Dissent: Wang Dan’s Trial and the New “State Security” Era Leaking State Secrets: The Case of Gao Yu China: Enforced Exile of Dissidents" Government "Re-entry Blacklist" Revealed Further Reading Chinese Scholars Detained Human Rights Watch Campaign Document Tiananmen Mother’s Campaign Off-Site Link Dr. Jiang Yanyong’s Letter and Petition Off-Site Link |