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_NEWSDATE: 2012-06-15 | News by: 经济学人 | 有0人参与评论 | 专栏: 天安门 | _FONTSIZE: _FONT_SMALL _FONT_MEDIUM _FONT_LARGE
But to a surprising degree, the official campaign to shove 1989 down the memory hole has succeeded. Through their near-monopoly control of the media and educational materials, and their intimidation and suppression of those who would challenge the official version of events, authorities have made the story fade, faster than its advancing years would seem to allow. So far as I have gauged it, I’ve found the forced forgetfulness to be distressing.
With this year’s anniversary however comes evidence that the ministers of propaganda have not succeeded in making “6-4” disappear entirely. Though it has not been one of those attention-getting round-numbered ones, the 23rd anniversary has seen an uptick in June 4th-related news and remembrance. The Hong Kong vigil attracted scores of thousands, and smaller-scale attempts to commemorate the killings were mounted (and quickly broken up) in cities on the mainland.
For days leading up to the anniversary, internet-speeds slowed as filtering and monitoring were stepped up. The police presence was heavy not only in Tiananmen square itself, but also farther afield. I passed through two police checkpoints on Sunday, while driving back to Beijing from neighbouring Tianjin. I also saw police nervously standing guard by a crowd that had gathered around some street musicians on Monday—some 15km away from Tiananmen.
In one especially bizarre episode, yesterday officials blocked internet searches on the term “Shanghai Composite Index”. As it happened, China’s leading stock exchange had reported a drop of 64.89 points for the day. The odd correlation of those digits, to June 4th, 1989 (ie “6/4/89”) surely marks a wild coincidence, if not an instance of extremely clever caper. Those who think it was mischief point out that the index was reported to have opened for the day at 2346.98, an improbable-seeming combination of all the day’s most sensitive digits.
In a more solemn development, in late May the Tiananmen Mothers announced that one of its members, a 73-year-old man named Ya Weilin, had hanged himself in an underground car park. He died in despair over the lack of redress for death of his 22-year-old son, Ya Aiguo, who was shot in 1989. According to the group, the elder Mr Ya was a retired government employee in good health who “ended his life in such a resolute way to protest the government’s brutality.”
And on June 1st one of the key officials who had been in power during the events of 1989 went public with a drastic rewrite of the story. Chen Xitong was mayor of Beijing at the time and, as much as anyone, became the public face of the official argument: that the protests were the result of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy orchestrated by a few foreign-backed “black hands”; and the government’s response was correct and unavoidable.
Mr Chen was removed from power in 1995 in a spectacular corruption scandal, having nothing to do with Tiananmen in 1989. In a new book published in Hong Kong he says that June 4th was a tragedy that could have and should have been avoided. While he acknowledges that it was handled improperly, he says that he had little to do with the decision-making. Less than one month after the violence, he had been the one to read aloud the government’s report. In these newly published interviews he insists that every word of that statement—indeed every mark of punctuation—was written by others, and that he had no choice but to read it.- 新闻来源于其它媒体，内容不代表本站立场！
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