30 May 2011 – can be downloaded from: www.aidoh.dk/GB-History2011
Appeal to the press, artists, working places, libraries, universities, and other institutions of education
Give the Chinese students their history back!
Help mark the 22nd anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. In 1989 the Chinese students occupied the Tiananmen Square in Beijing for months in an attempt to press the Chinese government to take steps towards democracy and to fight against corruption. But on 4th June 1989 the regime threw in the army against the unarmed students.
Give the Chinese their story back. The story is banned in China, but all the students’ newspaper articles, fliers etc. have been collected by the democracy movement in Hong Kong. These collections of Chinese and English documents have now been put on the Internet from where they can be downloaded for free.
Many of the young dissidents were imprisoned in the wake of the crackdown. Some are still in jail but they are no longer young. China still practises a massive censorship on information on the massacre. And it is impossible for Chinese people to obtain uncensored information about the event.
In China the encroachments continue. The famous artist Ai Weiwei has recently been jailed. Guggenheim has launched a petition to set him free. The imprisonment of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo is maintained and his wife has been put under house arrest.
Thousands of Chinese students are today studying at universities and other institutions of education in the West. Most of them do not even know their own history due to the censorship. You can help to remedy this.
Therefore we invite all pro-democracy institutions, scholars and working colleagues to download and print out this documentation or burn it on a CD. Place it on the shelves of libraries and hand it out as a gift to Chinese students on 4th June, the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre.
This way we can make a contribution to preserve the memory of the victims and maybe inspire a new generation of Chinese to see democracy as a possibility for China.
We call on everybody to support this initiative and to mail this appeal to other institutions of education where there are Chinese students or others who might be interested in preserving and distributing the knowledge about the Tiananmen massacre.
The initiative of this appeal and informative campaign is a co-operation between the democracy movement in Hong Kong and Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot who in 1997 put up an 8 meter high Pillar of Shame in Hong Kong to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre. Hong Kong is the only place on Chinese soil where the victims can be honoured.
This year Jens Galschiot has decided not to go to Hong Kong to join the commemoration ahead of the 22nd anniversary of the crackdown. On two occasions Hong Kong’s immigration authorities have refused his entry without justification. So he will not risk once again booking an expensive ticket and enduring a troublesome 24 hours flight and 6 hours of interrogation just to be sent back immediately with the first plane.
It seems that China’s curbing of free speech has got a solid grip, also in Hong Kong. Galschiot is just one of many critics who have been denied entry. So the city is deprived of a cultural exchange that is taken for granted in all open democratic societies. The expulsions are a strident violation of the principle of ‘One country – Two systems’ that was guarantied ahead of Hong Kong’s reunion with China in ‘97.
Useful links:
Download the documents about Tiananmen 1989: http://www.aidoh.dk/Tiananmen89
Galschiot’s activities related to China: http://www.aidoh.dk/China-Activities
Guggenheim’s petition: www.aidoh.dk/Ai-Petition
The democracy movement in Hong Kong:
HK Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China
E-mail: Αυτή η διεύθυνση ηλεκτρονικού ταχυδρομείου προστατεύεται από τους αυτοματισμούς αποστολέων ανεπιθύμητων μηνυμάτων. Χρειάζεται να ενεργοποιήσετε τη JavaScript για να μπορέσετε να τη δείτε., internet: www.alliance.org.hk/english/index.html, Phone: +852 2782 6111
Contact Jens Galschiot: E-mail: Αυτή η διεύθυνση ηλεκτρονικού ταχυδρομείου προστατεύεται από τους αυτοματισμούς αποστολέων ανεπιθύμητων μηνυμάτων. Χρειάζεται να ενεργοποιήσετε τη JavaScript για να μπορέσετε να τη δείτε., internet: www.aidoh.dk, tel. +45 6618 4058, Banevaenget 22, DK-5270 Odense N