Dilip Simeon's blog

In the spring of 1989, more than one million Chinese students and workers occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square and began the largest political protest in communist China's history. Six weeks of protests ended with the Beijing massacre of 3-4 June. 15 APRIL - HU YAOBANG'S DEATH: Former Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang, a leading reformist, dies of a heart attack aged 73. Mourners begin to gather in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. They are expressing their sadness, but also their dissatisfaction with the pace of reform in China. 18-21 APRIL - DEMONSTRATIONS SPREAD: Students carry a memorial banner to Hu Yaobang. Numbers in Beijing swell into thousands in the following days, and demonstrations spread to cities and universities nationwide. Students, workers and officials shout slogans calling for greater freedom and democracy and an end to what they called dictatorship - others complain about inflation, salaries and housing. 22 APRIL - HU'S MEMORIAL: Tens of thousands ...

May 1968 and June 1989 are two of the most significant months of the historical period after the second World War. In fact 1968 and 1989 in their entirety witnessed a sequence of world changing events. They were both the high watermark of the cold war and the beginning of its end, with the re-ordering of the global balance of power. They saw unmanageable political crises unfold in the Western capitalist world as well as in the Soviet bloc and the People’s Republic of China. 1968 was the height of the Vietnam war, that most deeply affected my generation, and 1989 was when both the PRC and the USSR were shaken to their foundations.  And here is a description of  America today: It's been five decades since 1968, and things are somehow worse These events were crowded and there is much to say. One term that I have used to describe them is  ideological implosion -  this is also linked to the collapse of legitimacy .  In this sense the events of '68 led inex...

NB: Human rights defenders the world over should read the  Tiananmen Mothers  appeal and unequivocally support the Chinese people's struggle for democracy and justice. We must no longer allow national, ethnic, political and religious boundaries to obstruct clear vision on the matter of human rights - t his struggle is global since violations and injustice are also global - DS The families of those killed during the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown have accused Beijing of subjecting them to nearly three decades of “white terror” in a bid to stop them speaking out about the massacre. In  an open letter , (see below) published on Wednesday ahead of the 27th anniversary of the protests, the Tiananmen Mothers campaigning group said its members had been spied on, detained and threatened by security agents as part of attempts to cover up the killings. China’s Brave Underground Journal - Remembrance Looking Back at the June 4 Massacre, Twenty-Four Years on June 4, 1989 - ...

Why does it even matter 25 years later? It matters because of Tang Deying, who has been punished for her refusal to forget. Her son, who was detained riding his bike home on June 6, never emerged from police custody. She was told by another detainee that he'd been beaten to death.. The People's Republic of Amnesia - Remembering A Forgotten Tiananmen That’s  the ingenious title of a new book  by NPR correspondent Louisa Lim, who I had the pleasure of working with briefly when I was working on a project in Shanghai in 2010. I just ordered it and plan to review it soon. But the story of  how  Lim wrote this book is remarkable and bears mentioning now; it brings to light just how dangerous a topic Tiananmen Square remains for journalists today. Lim tells the story in  a Washington Post article  from earlier this week. I can’t urge you strongly enough to read it all. So intent is China on wiping out all recollections of the Tiananmen Square violence of June ...