It's an inconvenient truth that the political state of China, with such a big population, has to be under dictatorship of the Communist Party, and they are going in the right direction.
If peace and prosperity is being championed, why not?
We can't really please everyone, can't we? Not to say people in millions.
‘Not an Isolated Incident’
Twenty years after her teenage son's death in Tiananmen Square, Ding Zilin waits for an apology she says will never come.
Greg Baker
/
AP
Ding Zilin stood before a shrine to her son, Jiang Jielian, in her apartment last year
Jun 2, 2009 | Updated: 6:51 p.m. ET Jun 2, 2009
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On May 17 about 50 elderly parents gathered in a private home for a memorial service to mourn their children who'd died in the June 4, 1989, crackdown on pro-democracy protestors. One notable absentee was 73-year-old Ding Zilin, founder of the Tiananmen Mothers organization, who'd been slated to deliver a memorial speech. Friends said authorities were severely restricting her movements until after the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square bloodshed. Recent phone calls to Ding went unanswered, but in late April, NEWSWEEK's Melinda Liu visited Ding in her Beijing apartment, where she still keeps a small shrine to her late son. Excerpts:
What do you think was the root cause of government repression against the Tiananmen Square protestors 20 years ago?
When I brought back the remains of my son, he was only a teenager. Why had he been killed? When I asked authorities for a reason, they explained that they had suppressed a riot. Now I understand that the June 4 incident was a tragedy of the system. It's impossible to rely on people in the leadership to rescue Chinese society … According to the party, the life of an ordinary Chinese person is just like the life of a blade of grass. China is the No. 1 country in the world governed by dictatorship. I am not optimistic about its future. The former leader of Cambodia killed people, and he was later sentenced to prison. So what about Deng Xiaoping, who'd ordered the Army to kill students?
Twenty years later, China is still trying to move on. But nothing can happen until an honest retelling of what happened on June 4 takes place.
When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited China earlier this year, she said disagreements over human rights should not get in the way of close Sino-U.S. relations.
I was disappointed with Hillary Clinton. Although, personally speaking, I feel grateful to her because she helped rescue me in 1995 when she was attending the international women's conference in Beijing. I also heard that Hillary wrote in her book that she didn't agree with President Bill Clinton attending a red-carpet ceremonial review of troops in front of Tiananmen Square when he made a state visit to China. I really felt very frustrated when he did that.
Tiananmen was the place where students were killed in 1989. With the blood of the students still wet, the wounds still there, unhealed, how could Clinton step onto the red carpet to review Chinese troops? I felt in my heart that he had stepped on the hearts of the mothers of Tiananmen.
What message would you like to pass to Hillary Clinton?
I welcome Hillary to visit me, and the former president, too. I welcome both of them to come to my home as guests of honor … Hillary had helped to free me when I was detained for 43 days in 1995. So please convey my thanks to her for her help. But the speeches she made later have disappointed me. She said the human-rights issue should not interfere with bilateral relations. If she puts it this way, I want to ask her whether the United States is still the biggest truly democratic country in the world? If I were to express my feelings about her in a respectful way, I'd say she's a stateswoman. Otherwise, I'd say she is a politician.
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