Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the massacre in Beijing. A few years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing some people who were working with college students there at the time. They recalled horror stories and mixed messages coming from different sources. Students left to protest in Beijing and never returned. The universities had nothing to tell the families. One remembers the dead body of a professor left as a warning at the school’s entrance. As Americans, my friends eventually fled for a season to secure their safety. They recall that time as wrenching, confusing, and the first time many of the college students had ever considered their government as anything but good and protective.
It was a loss of innocence for many and the world’s small peek into the controlled environment called China. Eventually, the country became complicit in its coverage of the killings. No one knows how many really died, although NY Times writer Nicholas Kristof thinks it was about 1,000.
I remember visiting the Square and thinking of the brave students crying out against government corruption and control. I wondered how differently today’s students see the world outside them. The Internet has brought the world to them. Twenty years later, they could read about the massacre freely on Wikipedia or other sources. Do they care? According to this article in the NY Times, China recently closed down such sites as Twitter and message boards, fearing a resurgence on the anniversary. Will young people stand for this again?
This morning on NPR, they ran a fascinating update on where the leaders of the student movement are today. Zhang Boli, who was #17 on the most-wanted list in China, landed in my hometown of Fairfax, VA, where he is a pastor of a Chinese church. After escaping, he was incarcerated in a Russian prison where he read the Bible for the first time. In the jail cell, he says, he became free for the first time. It’s an amazing story you can read/see for yourself at this link. Pastor Boli puts his sermons online for students who were like him, looking for justice and peace. We’ll see if that link is eliminated as well.
