Re: [Marxism] Workers bore brunt of Tiananmen Repression

[Torrent <torrent.org@xxxxxxxxx>]

It's another workers' story about Tienanmen event in NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/opinion/31lijia.html?_r=2

'Here Come the Workers!'

WHEN I think about 1989, the date I remember most clearly is May 28, a week
before the crackdown in Tiananmen Square. That was the day I organized a
major demonstration of factoryworkers in Nanjing, hundreds of miles south of
Beijing.

The reform-minded Hu Yaobang, who had been forced out of his job as
Communist Party general secretary by hard-liners, had died a month earlier.
When the government rejected their requests for his rehabilitation, Beijing
students began marching toward and gathering in Tiananmen, demanding greater
freedom and democracy. Their actions were like a match thrown onto kindling;
soon students from all over the country took to the streets. They were then
joined by millions of ordinary citizens, many of whom were disgusted by
corruption, inflation and the lack of personal freedom. Though the Chinese
democracy movement is identified with Tiananmen and Beijing, it was really
nationwide in character.

At that time I was working in a missile-production factory in Nanjing, my
hometown. The factory housed us in identical buildings, indoctrinated us in
meeting rooms, and barred us from wearing lipstick or flared trousers and
from dating anyone within three months of entering the factory. Every month,
we had to show blood to the "period police" to prove we were not pregnant.

To escape, I taught myself English in the hope of getting a job as an
interpreter. Even though I still worked at the factory, I started to wear
short skirts and have boyfriends. I listened to the BBC and attended
lectures at Nanjing University where we debated whether Western-style
democracy was the answer for China.

On that Sunday in May, after watching televised images of workers in
Guangzhou marching in the rain, I decided to organize a protest. I
telephoned all my friends at the factory, and some of them informed their
friends. We got the banners and placards ready in just a few hours.

Under the wary eyes of our factory leaders, about 300 of us set off, as if
for battle. Walking at the very front, I held a red flag and felt a sense of
liberation that I had never experienced before. Behind me two workers
carried a cloth banner that read, "Here come the workers!" The little strips
of bright red cloth tied to our arms and heads flared in the wind.

We marched toward the Drum Tower, Nanjing's equivalent of Tiananmen. On the
main street, our group melted into a flow of marchers. Before us walked
students from a technical school; at our tail were several dozen workers
from a glass-making factory. We chanted slogans like "Long live democracy!"
"Down with the repressive government!" "Anyone who dares to crack down on
the democracy movement will be condemned for 10,000 years!" Onlookers
cheered us. Along the way, hundreds more workers from our factory joined in.

During that time, my ear was glued to my shortwave radio, and I learned
about the crackdown at Tiananmen from foreign broadcasts. Feeling defeated,
I left China in 1990. When I returned a few years later, I found a booming
economy and, eventually, a space called "privacy" that hadn't really existed
before. People could finally dress and date as they pleased.

We're still in a cage here. But for many, my fellow marchers included, it
has grown so large that we hardly feel its limits. In that sense the 1989
protests weren't a total failure. Without our efforts, China's rulers might
have not expanded the cage at all.

Lijia Zhang is the author of "'Socialism Is Great!': A Worker's Memoir of
the New China."

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2009/6/5 Eli Stephens <elishastephens@xxxxxxxxxxx>

>
> Louis posts an article from the Christian Science Monitor (
> http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0604/p06s14-woap.html) which talks about how
> workers bore the brunt of the repression at Tienanmen Square. The article
> claims that 50 "protesters" still languish in jail, most of them workers,
> and says they were charged with "counterrevolutionary assault,"
> "counterrevolutionary sabotage," or "hooliganism."
>
> I'd call "hooliganism" something like breaking a store window or setting
> fire to a trash can. But the article makes clear the actions of these
> workers were far beyond that:
>
> "That, says Han, partly reflects the fact that workers, not students, were
> the most aggressive in resisting the military takeover of the square on the
> night of June 3, burning buses and tanks."
>
> He might have added, "burning buses and tanks" which contained members of
> the PLA, some of whom were killed.
>
> Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article (
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/world/asia/04protester.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print)
> interviewing two former protesters, both of whom served two years in prison.
> Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989)
> says that "Wang Dan, the student leader who topped the most wanted list,
> spent seven years in prison." Given these facts, it seems highly unlikely
> that anyone still in prison after 20 years was a mere "protester." Far more
> likely is that were among those involved with physical assaults, including
> murder, on members of the PLA.
>
>
>
> Eli Stephens
>  Left I on the News
>  http://lefti.blogspot.com
>
>
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