Remembering Tiananmen Square: Time to say 'no' to tyranny
That overcast morning seems like yesterday. The deafening noise of tanks rolling into Tiananmen Square still rings in my ears. The Goddess of Democracy,a statue the protesters erected, collapsed, but we students weren't scared. "It's a war!" we gasped excitedly. But soon after, we had a brutal awakening as soldiers bludgeoned us with long iron bars and wooden sticks. I trampled over several bodies. Caught between a tank and the stampeding crowd, and unable to breathe, I climbed onto the tank and crawled over the treads, with machine guns hovering above me.
For 25 years, I didn't allow myself to remember or feel the pain. But recently, I broke down in front of a therapist. It was my first time I allowed myself to remember the feel of the tank treads. It had been tearing me apart all these years. But massacres in China have never truly stopped.
One such massacre started decades before the 1989 Tianamen Square incident: 11 of my relatives died from starvation, execution and suicide after the communists took power in China in 1949. My parents and grandparents were jailed or persecuted. But I only discovered the deaths a year ago, as I interviewed relatives for a book on China. No one wanted to talk about the past. At least 50 million people died in the Great Leap Forward, wrote journalist Yang Jisheng, in his book, 'Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958-1962'.
Never forget the Leftist/statists like Krugman and T. Friedman admire the Chinese form of government for its efficiency and control.
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