Two disabled survivors of the 1989 army crackdown on the student-led Tiananmen Square demonstrations for democracy have finally had the chance to mourn deposed Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang. Pang Meiqing, who is paralysed from the waist down after a soldier's bullet sliced through his spinal cord, and Qi Zhiyong, who lost a leg, drove their three-wheel motorcycles to Zhao's tightly guarded courtyard home in Beijing on Sunday and tearfully paid their final respects.
Zhao died at a Beijing hospital on January 17 at the age of 85 after spending 15 years under house arrest for opposing the crackdown, which killed hundreds, many of them unarmed students.
"He made huge sacrifices and a humanitarian choice. He paid a very high price," Pang, 41, told Reuters on Monday. Police had prevented Pang from leaving his home until after Zhao's funeral on January 29.
"He's a great man. He's a giant figure," said Pang, who was forced to retire from a state enterprise that makes printing presses at the age of 32 due to "long-term illness". He had joined the Tiananmen protesters and was rescuing the injured when he was shot.
Nervous that Zhao's death might trigger protests, the leadership tightened security in Beijing and permitted only a scaled-down funeral for Zhao who, as premier in the 1980s, launched market reforms that turned the country into a fledgling economic powerhouse from a centrally planned backwater.
China has rejected calls for a reassessment, saying Zhao split the party and made "serious mistakes" in handling the Tiananmen protests.
Other mourners who went to Zhao's home on Sunday included AIDS activist Hu Jia and democracy campaigner Li Hai who was jailed for nine years for compiling a name list of people jailed over the Tiananmen protests.
A Western diplomat interpreted the leadership's handling of the aftermath of Zhao's death as less heavy-handed than it could have been.
"It seems to fit within that slightly gentler line of allowing people to pay their respects," the envoy said.
"DESPOTIC RULE" Zhao's political ghost haunts the party, which has monopolised power since the 1949 revolution and now grapples with problems, from rampant corruption to a widening wealth gap.
Fearing Zhao's death would evoke memories of the crackdown and spark unrest by disgruntled jobless workers and poor farmers envious of wealthy urban residents, his successors had tried to erase him from history by keeping him under house arrest.
Two of Zhao's daughters-in-law received the mourners, who knelt, bowed and wept before a portrait of Zhao hanging in his study which was turned into a mourning hall bedecked with flowers, showed television footage obtained by Reuters.
"If Chinese Communist Party (leaders) were all good men like you, China could be saved and there wouldn't be people like us who were crippled under despotic rule," Qi said.
"May you rest in peace," said Qi, leaning against crutches and choking with emotion. Qi was a bystander shot when the troops moved into Tiananmen Square to crush the protests.
Zhao's remains have been cremated, but his family has not decided on a final resting place for his ashes, which are temporarily at his home.
The mourners left messages in the guest book.
"You have gone. We have come. We are still young," one wrote, echoing Zhao's words to student protesters that they "were still young" when he went to the square days before the massacre in his last public appearance and tearfully begged them to disperse.
Earlier on Sunday, Zhang Xianling, whose 19-year-old son was shot and killed in the 1989 massacre, handed Zhao's family a copy of an open letter by a group of Tiananmen mothers.
"Our hearts are bleeding," read the letter.
Comments
Comments are closed.