China braces for Tiananmen tensions

13 Apr 2009, 2:01 pm   -   Source: AAP
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The 20th anniversary this week of reformist leader Hu Yaobang's death will kick off an ultra-sensitive two-month period for China's communist rulers.

The 20th anniversary this week of reformist leader Hu Yaobang's death will kick off an ultra-sensitive period for China's communist rulers as they are forced to revisit the deadly Tiananmen crackdown.

Wednesday will mark the beginning of a period of heightened tension and increased security in China that will last until June 4, the date in 1989 when soldiers were sent into Tiananmen Square to crush six weeks of unprecedented democracy protests.

"People have been told individually not to commemorate this," said Jean-Philippe Beja, a Hong Kong-based academic with the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China.

Indeed, human rights groups and activists have said the government is making huge efforts to ensure the next two months pass smoothly, with dissidents being harassed or kept under close watch.

Hu was ousted as the head of the Communist Party in 1987 for his weak response to student protests in December of the previous year.

When he died on April 15, 1989, students used his death to call for democratic reforms. The protests snowballed as a fractured leadership could not agree on how to handle the demonstrations.

"(Hu) was a symbol of the political reforms that had been stopped following his removal," said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a China scholar at Hong Kong University.

The protests began with about 700 students gathering in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on April 17.

The next day, down the street from the square and in front of Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the Communist Party, up to 1,500 people called for Hu's political rehabilitation.

By the eve of Hu's funeral on April 21, class boycotts had been called at 20 universities and the next day a massive 200,000 students gathered in Tiananmen Square demanding a dialogue with the nation's leaders.

Tensions mounted on April 25 when the People's Daily published an editorial accusing the students of seeking to overthrow the Communist Party.

In the official rhetoric, Hu quickly became an object of criticism which only added more fuel to the fire.

But the protests grew as other sectors of society, including workers, joined in on huge marches through Beijing's streets that were led by students parading portraits of Hu in a nearly festive atmosphere.

With the international media converging on the capital, the movement boiled over in May as students held a vast hunger strike in Tiananmen Square.

Finally in early June, the soldiers of the People's Liberation Army marched into central Beijing, killing hundreds - if not thousands - of people to bring the demonstrations to a tragic end.

According to China specialists, Hu was popular because he tried to rehabilitate the victims of the tumultuous Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and admitted mistakes in the handling of Tibet, which he said needed real autonomy.

He was "a socialist with a human face who believed in socialism but was ready to discuss with those who did not believe", said Beja.

"He had really sought to find a way to resolve the excesses of the regime."

Twenty years after his death, Hu's official reputation remains murky.

"Hu is still in a kind of limbo or political purgatory, he is not totally taboo and people can speak about him, but at the same time his status remains ambiguous," said Cabestan.

Efforts to rehabilitate Hu were attempted at the end of 2005 during the 90th anniversary of his birth, but the effort was short lived, Cabestan said.

A biography of Hu, published in January, only covers his life until 1982. A request to interview the author, Han Honghong, of the Communist Party's office on research of historical documents was turned down.

Han conveyed the message through his editor that "it was not convenient for (him) to be interviewed".

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