A witness to history (02/11/2009)

Has it really been 20 years?

It was about this time in 1989 when the letter came in the mail. It was from an outfit called People to People, which conducts exchange programs for both students and adults. I'd heard about the program before; occasionally Jay County students had taken part. And at a newspaper gathering an Ohio publisher had told me the program could be an affordable way to get some localized international reporting into the paper. His paper had participated a couple of times.

In this case it was an invitation to be a delegate to an international gathering on trade and economic development. I was just coming off a stint as president of the Portland Area Chamber of Commerce and had been working on economic development issues with Jay County Development Corporation.

But it was the site of the conference that caught my eye and slowed my hand as I started to toss the invitation into the wastebasket: Beijing.

I read the material a second time. Then a third. Over lunch, I ran the idea past my wife. And for reasons I'll never quite be able to explain, I accepted the invitation before the week was out.

That might have been the end of the story. Editor goes on international junket, writes a series of stories trying to relate economic development and trade with China to the local economy, and that's that.

Except that this was 1989.

And historic events were about to unfold in Beijing.

As the trip approached, I read everything I could find about what was happening. A reform figure in the Communist Party had died, and students who felt he had been misused demonstrated at Tiananmen Square. A few other reform figures visited the students and encouraged them by expressing sympathy with their cause.

Further reforms and greater freedom were called for by youthful speakers. Hunger strikes were launched, calling on the powerful to allow new political freedoms. The "Freedom Wall" movement of a few years earlier was evoked.

Meanwhile, more and more students came to the square to join the demonstrators, speakers, and hunger strikers. Word of the demonstrations spread to other cities in China, and soon students from distant universities were traveling by Beijing to become part of an unprecedented movement for freedom.

The government responded clumsily, sometimes expressing patience, sometimes threatening the use of force.

By the time I arrived in Beijing for the conference, martial law had already been declared. But it was kind of "martial law lite" and had little impact.

Though my hotel was away from the center of the city, I made my way to Tiananmen at the earliest opportunity. Soon, I was dividing my time between listening to speakers at the conference and talking with student demonstrators at the square. I was there at midnight, with a graduate student from the conference acting as interpreter. I was there at dawn the morning that the demonstrators erected a makeshift statue of the Goddess of Democracy directly across the street from an enormous portrait of Mao.

The two were locked in a symbolic stare-down, communism vs. freedom.

In some ways, it seemed that that act, the erection of the statue, was the tipping point for those in power. The students had gone too far.

Quickly, the level of harassment and tension increased.

A few days later, with the conference winding down, the American contingent took an obligatory trip to be tourists at the Great Wall. When we got back to the hotel, I immediately returned to the square only to find that the mood had changed dramatically.

The expressions on the faces of the student leaders speaking into bullhorns were grim. Police had entered the square from one side and had beaten a number of protesters. One young man lay unconscious on a stretcher, his head bloodied.

Where there had been an atmosphere of camaraderie, there was now anxiety. Shared purpose had given way to suspicion.

My camera was viewed with hostility. I was asked if I were a Russian. The implication was that I was working for the government.

It was time to leave.

Another guy and I paid double the usual fare to a reluctant cab driver to get back to the hotel. As we made the trip, it was clear why the price had jumped. Roads were blocked, and the streets were in turmoil.

As we crossed one intersection that had become a sea of people, I started to raise my camera to get a picture. The driver panicked. The sight of a camera could upset the crowd. Our car could be overturned. The camera went back into the bag.

Real martial law arrived later that night as troops moved into the square. No one knows for certain how many were killed and wounded in the massacre. Scores of student leaders disappeared, some later making their way to the West.

We awoke to a different city the next morning. Automatic weapons fire popped from the streets around us sporadically. Every taxicab had vanished. Only a few bicycles made their way through the deserted streets.

The spirit of freedom that had inhabited Tiananmen was now a phantom.

It will always feel like yesterday. Has it really been 20 years?[[In-content Ad]]