Jun 2, 2009

Commemorating the Unforgettable: Tiananmen 20 Years On

Remarks of Barbara Haig

Good morning.  Welcome. I am Barbara Haig from the National Endowment for Democracy, and I am pleased to be here with Harry Wu, Executive Director of the Laogai Research Foundation.

We are here today to commemorate the events that were watched the world over in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago.   We are joined by many friends to honor those who fell as a result of their desire to bring about change in the way their government approached its relationship to those it governs.  We are here to remember their lives, to reflect on what happened and on how it has shaped developments in China until now.  And finally, to consider how these events live on to inspire future generations of activists and reformers to carry the flame of those who went before.

In the spring of 1989, there are several events regarding China that stand out in my own memory: I remember the visit to China of Mikhail Gorbachav who had declared in the Soviet Union a new period of perestroika and glasnost.  His visit to China seemed so symbolic; a dramatic new paradigm shift from the last phase of the Cold War in which China was a counter to the ambitions of the expansive ideology of the Soviet Union, and an unspoken challenge to the Chinese regime that suggested that the hyper heavy hand of the state in economy and in the lives of citizens was failing, just as it had in the Soviet Union.

I lived at the time just next door to the Chinese embassy on Connecticut Avenue.

I watched day by day as the crowds gathered in the small park in front of the embassy, which came to be known as mini Tiananmen Square.  The mood was optimistic and the reaction of people in the embassy was interesting.  At that time, many embassy employees lived in the embassy building.  Over time, as the crowds persisted and grew ever more happy, with cars passing by honking in solidarity, the staff in the embassy seemed to grow more friendly as they waved out their windows at the crowds below.  It seemed for a while to be a moment in which the regime might actually say, yes, we can and will do better for our people.

Then came June 4; the windows in the embassy shut, the crowds grew quiet, but persisted.  Bewilderment and shock set in, as the people outside my home, and indeed the world over, tried to understand what had happened and what would become of China and its proud and deserving people.

We are blessed to be in a free society and to be joined by those who flee repression from all corners of the earth.  They will help us remember and learn.  That is why we are here today.