fredag 7. juni 2019

Tiananmen 1989: Lessons for Today

Wu’er Kaixi was among the most outspoken of the student leaders during the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, famously reproaching then-Premier Li Peng at a meeting broadcast on national television.

Three decades on, he’s more circumspect but remains just as harsh a critic of the Communist regime and just as committed to bringing democracy to China. While many former leaders and participants in the protests have moved on, embracing lives and careers that have little direct relation to the movement, others remain wedded to the cause, either by vocation, through survivors’ guilt, or because their actions permanently put them on the wrong side of the authorities. They remain determined to keep the memories alive even as China’s rulers seek to sandblast the protests and the military’s bloody crackdown from history.

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