William F. Jasper
New American
“Tank man.” One lone individual stubbornly facing down the unstoppable, pitiless machinery of the totalitarian Communist state. On a fateful day, for a few awe-inspiring moments, one anonymous man armed only with a couple of grocery bags halted a column of tanks, briefly stopping an army on a mission of murderous rampage.
As many as ten thousand victims (or more) were slaughtered: machine-gunned, bayoneted, beaten, or ground into pulp under the treads of the army tanks. Tank Man’s unbelievably heroic and unforgettable actions have been immortalized in video and photo images that have been seen by billions of people worldwide over the past three decades.
Tragically, very few of China’s nearly 1.4 billion people have seen these images, however. The Communist Party censors have made sure of that. Like everything else concerning the Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 4, 1989, “Tank Man” has gone down the Orwellian memory hole. His name, his identity, his whereabouts are unknown.
Was he killed, run over by the Peoples’ Liberation Army tanks, as some allege? Was he executed by authorities after disappearing into prison? Was he released from prison after being sufficiently “re-educated” (i.e., tortured and brainwashed)? Only Mao’s heirs in Beijing’s oligarchy can answer those questions.
On June 3, U. S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo called on the Beijing regime to come clean. “We urge the Chinese government to make a full, public accounting of those killed or missing to give comfort to the many victims of this dark chapter of history,” he said in a press statement. “Such a step would begin to demonstrate the Communist Party’s willingness to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms. We call on China to release all those held for seeking to exercise these rights and freedoms, halt the use of arbitrary detention, and reverse counterproductive policies that conflate terrorism with religious and political expression. China’s own constitution stipulates that all power belongs to the people. History has shown that nations are stronger when governments are responsive to their citizens, respect the rule of law, and uphold human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Pompeo’s statement also said: “On June 4, we honor the heroic protest movement of the Chinese people that ended on June 4, 1989, when the Chinese Communist Party leadership sent tanks into Tiananmen Square to violently repress peaceful demonstrations calling for democracy, human rights, and an end to rampant corruption. The hundreds of thousands of protesters who gathered in Beijing and in other cities around China suffered grievously in pursuit of a better future for their country. The number of dead is still unknown. We express our deep sorrow to the families still grieving their lost loved ones, including the courageous Tiananmen Mothers, who have never stopped seeking accountability, despite great personal risk. The events of thirty years ago still stir our conscience, and the conscience of freedom-loving people around the world.”
In China, Great Wall of Silence
“China marked 30 years since the deadly Tiananmen crackdown on Tuesday with a wall of silence and extra security after arresting activists and tightening internet censorship ahead of the politically sensitive anniversary,” the French news agency AFP reported from Beijing. “On a grey, overcast day, police checked the identification cards of every tourist and commuter leaving the subway near Tiananmen Square, the site of the pro-democracy protests that were brutally extinguished by tanks and soldiers on June 4, 1989. Foreign journalists were not allowed onto the square at all or [were] warned by police not to take pictures.”
Wang Dan, who was a 20-year-old student protest leader in 1989, told AFP that he and the other protesters “never expected” the government to react so ferociously. “To open fire on people, that was beyond our expectations,” he said. Wang spent years in prison for his role in the protests and now lives in exile in the United States. Wang Dan continues speak out for freedom and to condemn the Communist Party’s iron-fisted rule in China. However, his alma mater, Harvard University, like so much of the rest of academe, has jumped into bed with the Butchers of Beijing.
Ditto for the moguls of Wall Street and Big Tech. As we reported in December 2017, while Wang Dan was bewailing the increasing Marxist repression on American college campuses, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates and other U.S. plutocrats were being feted by Beijing’s communist overlords, as they were inducted into the Chinese Academy of Engineering. We reported:
Dr. Wang Dan, a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests (that turned into a massacre), penned a recent op-ed that appeared in the New York Times (of all places!) lamenting the fact that the communist thought police at many American colleges and universities are almost as prevalent and oppressive as in China. Dr. Wang, who spent nearly seven years in prison for his Tiananmen participation (he was one of the “lucky” ones who weren’t ground into hamburger under the People’s Liberation Army tank treads), writes in his op-ed entitled “Beijing Hinders Free Speech In America” that members of the China Students and Scholars Association, which has chapters at many of our universities, operate as a spying and enforcement arm of the Chinese government. The same can be said for the Confucius Institutes, another gestapo arm of China’s Ministry of Education that enforces CPC orthodoxy on American campuses. In a 2013 article entitled “China U,” in the left-wing magazine The Nation, University of Chicago anthropology professor emeritus Marchall Sahlins stated: “Confucius Institutes censor political discussions and restrain the free exchange of ideas.” And, he asked, “Why, then, do American universities sponsor them?"
Indeed, why? By what twisted moral calculus can such collaboration with ruthless megalomaniacs be justified? Professor Sahlins noted that the Confucius Institutes are “governed by a council of high state and party officials from various political departments and chaired by a member of the Politburo, Vice Premier Liu Yandong.” He charged that American university officials look the other way and pretend not to notice what the Confucius Institute and the China Students and Scholars Association are doing. By hosting a Confucius Institute, Professor Sahlins says, our colleges and universities have “become engaged in the political and propaganda efforts of a foreign government in a way that contradicts the values of free inquiry and human welfare to which they are otherwise committed.”
American academic officials, educators, and business leaders who cozy up to the mass-murdering communist regime in Beijing deserve even harsher condemnation than Professor Sahlins delivered. They have thrown in their lot with the enemies of truth, freedom, and decency. They are engaged (whether fully conscious of it or not) in treason against God and humanity. They are co-conspirators with the Butchers of Tiananmen Square and their successors, who continue to carry out Orwell’s description of merciless, totalitarian rule: “a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”
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