Who They Were: Part I [June 4, 1989]

China Human Rights Forum ^ | 1993 | Ding Zilin

[Dr. Marten]

"Since June Fourth, the Chinese government has talked constantly about respecting its citizens' "right to exist." Yet five years ago [sixteen now] guns and tanks deprived countless outstanding young Chinese men and women of their "right to exist" in a single night. This is nothing but hypocrisy. 

        As the mother of a victim, there is no way for me to forget these boys and girls and men and women, including my own son, who died in pools of blood. I want the people of the world to know that they once lived in this world, that this world once belonged to them, and why and how they disappeared from it.

        Late in the night of June 3, 1989, the West Road martial law troops came in from the western suburbs of Beijing along Wukesong and Cuiwei Roads, shooting and killing as they made their way east to the head of the bridge at Muxidi. There they were blocked by over ten thousand people. Just past 11 pm, the sound of machine gun fire began again and my 17-year-old son, Jiang Jielian, a second-year student at People's University High School, was in the first group of people to fall. Downed around the same time was Hao Zhijing, 30, a science and technology policy and management researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He had returned from a visit to the United States in 1988 and had been married less than a year. He too was his parents' cherished only child. He was shot in the chest and taken by local citizens to Fuxing Hospital where he died. His family did not find his body until July 4. Also among the mass of bodies that
fell one after another in the continuous spray of machine gun fire at Muxidi was Xiao Bo, a young instructor in the Chemistry Department at Beijing University who had turned 27 that day. He had gone to Muxidi expressly to urge his students to return to school. Xiao Bo died leaving behind a pair of twins not yet 70 days old. 

        Also brought down at the same time was 27-year-old Yuan Li, an engineer in the Electrical Machinery Department of the Beijing Machinery Industry Research Institute who had just received a visa to visit the United States. He was shot in the chest not long after leaving his home in Ganjiakou at 11 pm. Soon afterward, his corpse was labelled "Unknown Body #2" by the Naval General Hospital and placed in storage until his family found where it was on June 24. Stored together with Yuan Li's corpse was "Unknown Body #3," later identified by his family as Wang Chao, 30, an employee of the Stone Corporation who had been married only a month. "Unknown Body #1" turned out to be 19-year-old Ye Weihang, a third-year student at Beijing Middle School Number 57 and student association chairman. He was shot in the right shoulder and chest at 2 am on June 4, but did not die until, after falling, he was shot again in the back of the
head. Twenty-seven year-old Lu Chunlin, who entered the master's program of the Philosophy Department at People's University in 1986 and was the son of a southern Jiangsu farm family, was also shot at Muxidi. Just before he died, he used the last of his energy to give everything he was carrying with him to a passerby to take back to the university and report his death.

        As the troops charged toward Tiananmen, the number of sons and daughters of China stripped of their "right to exist" increased. Duan Changlong, a graduating senior majoring in applied chemistry in the Chemistry Department of Qinghua University, had just found a job. His 46-year-old father had only this one beloved son. That evening, Duan had left an experiment unfinished in the school laboratory and ridden his bike from Houhaijia to the vicinity of the Palace of Nationalities at Xidan. There he came across the martial law troops blocked by the crowd. He pushed forward and was hit in the chest with a bullet. People took him to the nearby Postal College where he stopped breathing before receiving any medical care. Also dying alongside Duan Changlong at the same time in the Postal College Hospital was a 19-year-old girl, Zhang Jin. She was a student majoring in foreign trade at a vocational high school and was training to work at the International Trade Center. Seeing the gunfire and killing, Zhang Jin and her boyfriend had hidden in a small alleyway near the Palace of Nationalities, but they were unable to avoid the slaughter. Just past midnight, Zhang Jin was shot twice in the head and fell at her boyfriend's feet. She died shortly after being taken to the Postal College Hospital around 1 am, June 4. Among the other bodies at the Postal College Hospital was that of a senior in the Industrial Management Department at the People's University, Wu Guofeng. He was the only university student from his remote district in Sichuan Province. He had left the school carrying a camera on the evening of June 3 and never returned.

 

[Dr. Marten]

As I mentioned in my previous post, June 4, 1989, I have decided to reproduce a few selections from various sources that recall the events that unfolded in and around Tiananmen Square as a result of the student-led protests and their call for Democracy.

This selected excerpt was taken from a letter that was written to the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna (1993) by Ding Zilin, the mother of one of the students who died on June 4. Her seventeen-year-old son, Jiang Jielan, was a student at the People's University where she hereself taught philosophy. Her  letter was later published by the China Human Rights forum in the summer of 1994. After a little searching I did manage to find an online reference to this letter, but unfortunately prying eyes from the mother land have been protected by the "Great Firewall".

Due to the lenth of this selection and the time needed to reproduce it, I have chosen to break it down into three parts: Who Who They Were; The Killing Continues; The Governments Repsonse.

[Dr. Marten]

Ping!