Twenty years ago, a crowd gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn the death of pro-market, pro-democracy and anti-corruption official, Hu Yaobang. Students had been gathering in the square off and on since April 14th. Soon one million people had gathered, but without a common cause, rather they were an emergent phenomenon. Some were free-market reformers, others anti-authoritarianism, and democratic reformers. On June fourth, Chinese tanks cleared Tiananmen Square, resulting in between 241 and 2,600 deaths, including soldiers, and thousands wounded.
On June fifth, amid the burning buses put up as blockades and fighting between protesters and soldiers, a column of tanks was brought to a sudden halt by a single man in a white shirt.
 Tank Man Credit: Jeff Widener |
When the tanks tried to drive around him, he moved to block them again. Then he climbed up on the tank and began talking to the soldier driving it.
No one knows what happened to Tank Man. Some accounts claim he was pulled down from the tank by the crowd, which absorbed him, others that he was taken away by soldiers. Some accounts claim he was arrested and executed, others claim he is alive and in hiding.
When my mother visited China in the late 1990s, the citizens she met assured her the protests were against local government corruption and had nothing to do with democracy. In an amazing demonstration of information control, university students at Beijing University were unable to recognize this image, so thoroughly was the Chinese government able to censor the historical accounts, media coverage, and Internet access.
The photograph of this incredible act of passive resistance has become iconic. I like to set it as my desktop background from time to time as an inspiration. Even if China does not remember what happened on June 4th, 1989, the rest of the world does, and we still admire this brave man’s act of peaceful defiance.
Human history will remember him.
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