On June 4, 1989, the violent finale to a plea for a more open and responsive government in China took place as tanks and infantry cleared Beijing’s Tiananmen Square of all student protesters. Listed here are brief biographies of nine well-known activists.
Fang Lizhi
Fang Lizhi, former vice-president of the University of Science and Technology of China, and his wife Li Shuxian, supported the students during the protests. They entered the U.S. Embassy in Beijing the day after the June 4 massacre.
Beijing police issued warrants for the couple for “inciting Wang Dan and other students to riot.” The Fangs stayed at the U.S. Embassy for one year before flying on a U.S. military plane to Britain. They arrived in the United States half a year later, and Fang received an appointment as professor of physics at the University of Arizona.
Fang passed away on April 6, 2012 at the age of 76.
Chai Ling
Chai Ling was the student leader who initiated the hunger strike. She was in charge of “Protect Tiananmen Square Headquarters.”
After the massacre she was on the Chinese regime’s wanted list. She left Mainland China through Hong Kong in April 1990, and arrived in Paris ten months later. She later went to the United States to continue her studies.
On June 1, 2010, Chai started the organization “Voice of Young Girls” to protect the lives and rights of women and girls in China.
Feng Congde
Feng Congde was also a student leader. During the protests he was an elected member of the Beijing University Preparatory Committee Standing Committee, president of Beijing University Students’ Autonomous Committee, vice-commander of Tiananmen Square Headquarters, and vice-commander of the Hunger Strike Committee.
Feng escaped to France after the massacre, and currently lives in the United States. Feng is the former husband of Chai Ling; the couple is now divorced.
Presently, Feng is chief editor of the “June 4th Archive,” and editor for “Citizens Participating in the Discussion of State Affairs.” He and many other well-known scholars founded the “Sun Yat-Sen School” to promote Sun’s ideas of ruling a country.
Wang Dan
Wang Dan, who was the deputy commander of the Square, was at the top of the regime’s student leaders wanted list. After the crackdown, he did not flee overseas, but hid in China.
When Wang went back to Beijing and met with a reporter, he was monitored by police and arrested. In 1991 he was sentenced to four years in prison.
After being released, Wang remained active in democratic and political movements. In October 1996, he was sentenced again, this time to 10 years. When U.S. President Bill Clinton was about to visit China in 1998, Wang was released on medical parole, and moved to Detroit.
In January 2011, when Szeto Wah, chairman of Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, passed away, Wang applied for a visa to join the group of mourners. However, the Hong Kong government would not grant him a visa, even after he voluntarily made four promises that he would “not meet with reporters, not hold public activities, not hold press conferences, and not stay in Hong Kong overnight.”
In March 2012, Wang Dan received a three-year appointment as visiting assistant professor at Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University, College of Humanities.
Wang and Wei Jingsheng, a prominent Chinese democracy activist in the United States, are regarded as “warriors of democracy” by many people.
Wang continues to promote democracy and human rights for China. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times, awarded a Human Rights Award from The National Endowment for Democracy, the Prize for Outstanding Democracy Activists from the Chinese Democracy Education Fund, a Certificate of Achievement from Chan’s Foundation of Journalism and Culture in the USA, among other honors.
Wu'er Kaixi
Wu‘er Kaixi, a Uighur, was a leader in the 1989 student democratic movement and advocated evacuating Tiananmen Square. This caused a dispute with Chai Ling, and Wu’er was removed from his leadership position. But he remains an influential figure among the students of the 1989 movement.
After the June 4 massacre, Wu'er became the number-two-man on the Chinese regime’s wanted list. He fled China via Hong Kong and remained in exile for many years.
In 2009 he was denied entry into Macaw even though he said he wanted to surrender himself. Now settled in Taichung, Taiwan, Wu'er is still on the Chinese regime’s wanted list.
Wang Juntao
Wang Juntao oversaw the Zhao Ziyang Funeral Committee in China. He now lives in exile in the United States. Last year Wang provided consultation for the Jasmine movement in China.
Wang was imprisoned twice in China, first on April 16, 1976 when he was a 17-year-old high school student in Beijing’s October First School. The reason for the arrest was that he had organized two classes of student activities in Tiananmen Square during the Qing Ming Festival. He also published four poems, which were denounced as counterrevolutionary at the time.
His second imprisonment was on Nov. 24, 1990, following the Tiananmen student massacre.
On Dec. 4, 1989 official state mouthpiece People’s Daily published an article calling Wang the “key perpetrator who incited, organized, and directed the counterrevolutionary riot.”
Wang was sentenced to 13 years in prison, but was released on medical parole in 1994 and expelled to the United States.
Wang obtained a Ph.D. degree in Political Sciences from Columbia University in 2006. In April 2010, during the Special Representative Assembly of the Chinese Democratic Party National Committee held in New York, he was elected co-chair of the committee along with Wang Youcai.
Su Xiaokang
Su Xiaokang is a Chinese writer and is regarded as an honest reporter of the 1980s in China. After June 4, Su was wanted by Chinese authorities for being “behind the 1989 student movement.” He went into exile in the United States and is now the director of the Democratic China magazine.
Yan Jiaqi
Yan Jiaqi was the director of the Institute of Political Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and an adviser to Zhao Ziyang’s office of political reform. Once, at a meeting with Hu Yaobang, Yan Jiaqi proposed that the life tenure of Party top leaders be abolished. This did not agree with the CCP Central Committee.
At the height of the political stalemate in the 1989 student protests, Yan Fuming, who was the secretary of the CCP Central Committee and head of the United Front Work Department of the CCP Central, invited Yan Jiaqi along with Bao Zunxin and other academics to help negotiate with the students. Together they tried to persuade the students to stop their hunger strike on May 13.
Four days later, Yan, Bao, and others, issued a statement, saying that “abuse of unlimited power and an irresponsible and inhumane government” had led to a series of problems in China. They showed solidarity with the students by gathering signatures from intellectuals.
On May 26, Yan Jiaqi and Bao Zunxin published their open letter to then Prime Minister Li Peng.
After the June 4 crackdown, Yan Jiaqi and others were listed as wanted by the Ministry of Public Security, and Yan was forced into exile.
In 1989, Yan Jiaqi became the first chairman of the Alliance for a Democratic China, which was based in Paris. In 1994, Yan moved from France to New York, and became a writer and guest lecturer at Columbia University.
Bao Zunxin
During the student movement in May 1989, Bao Zunxin and other intellectuals went to Tiananmen Square, trying to persuade students to abandon their hunger strike. Later, authorities accused Bao of conspiracy and manipulation, and sentenced him to five years in prison.
After his release from prison, Bao was under constant illegal surveillance, but was able to make a living by doing research and writing. He was also actively involved in the movement for democracy in China.
Bao died on Oct. 28, 2007 from a stroke.
Redressing the Victims
According to the Dui Hua Foundation, the regime currently holds less than 12 of the thousands who were detained in the crackdown. In a May 31 statement the group listed the names of seven people it believes are still in custody, saying they hadn’t gotten a response from the regime about such prisoners since September 2009.
The U.S. State Department issued a statement on June 3, saying the United States encourages China to publicly account for all those who died, protect its citizens’ human rights and “end the continued harassment of demonstration participants and their families.”
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin responded to the U.S. statement, saying it “deviated from the truth and interfered with China’s internal affairs.”
However, prominent Chinese economist and winner of the 2012 Milton Friedman Prize, Mao Yushi, said the June 4 massacre will likely be redressed. Mao said Wen Jiabao has this desire, and the people would also support it.
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