At 88, she is still speaking truth to power in China
An elderly lady faces the camera. Wearing a navy-blue jacket, her white hair tousled, she sits on a couch draped in a pink cloth.
Speaking with dignity and calm, albeit haltingly, she reads from a script.
“My name is Zhang Xianling,” she says. “I am 88 years old.”
Today is the 37th anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square Massacre. On 4 June 1989, China’s Communist Party (CCP) ordered the army to clear the square in central Beijing of students and others who had been protesting official corruption.
Hundreds to many thousands of people were killed. Including Ms Zhang’s son.
Wang Nan was 19 years old when he was shot in the head in the military crackdown.
In the video, Ms Zhang remembers that day.
“Those who were in Beijing at the time will never forget the deafening gunfire, the roar of armored vehicles, the wailing of ambulance sirens, and the angry cries of the crowds that night,” she says. “Still less will we ever forget the sight of our loved ones as they left home for the last time. No one could have imagined that a government claiming to ‘serve the people’ would order the military to fire upon them.”
Ms Zhang is one of the founding members of the Tiananmen Mothers, a China-based advocacy group made of family members of those who were slain that day. For 37 years they have simply asked the CCP to acknowledge its terrible mistake, hold those responsible for the massacre accountable and make amends.
Every year without fail they issue a statement calling for justice.
And every year, the CCP harasses members, ordering them to keep quiet. Information about the Tiananmen Square Massacre inside China is strictly censored.
This year the restrictions are especially harsh.
For the first time in more than 30 years, the CCP is banning them from visiting their children’s graves and holding their annual memorial ceremony, the group said. Ms Zhang said police have been stationed outside her home since 28 May. Many of the victims are buried in Wanan Cemetery, in northwest Beijing.
Every year, other human rights activists are also warned off speaking to the media and placed under surveillance. Absurdly, some like independent and now elderly journalist Gao Yu, are taken on a police-escorted “holiday” during this time to silence them. Please see our satirical report China Travel Magazine: Dissident Edition from last year for more on the CCP's forced travel.
It’s almost four decades since June 4. The group’s members are growing old. Ms Zhang herself is 88. This year’s statement was signed by 107 people and listed another 80 names of those who had passed away.
However, the passing of time has not weakened their resolve for justice.
In Ms Zhang’s words: “As families of the victims, we must ‘speak the truth, refuse to forget, seek justice, and awaken conscience.’ We will demand justice for our loved ones, so that the souls of the victims may finally rest in peace.”
Ms Zhang’s four-minute video message is posted below (the statement is reproduced here). You can watch more video statements from the Tiananmen Mothers on the same YouTube channel, many of them deeply moving as the women grow older, the years pass, but they continue to speak truth to power.
The quotes from Ms Zhang's speech in this story were human-edited machine generated translations.
