More than three decades back in the spring of 1989, Chinese military tanks rolled towards Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and soldiers opened fire on the crowds, crushing the country’s biggest pro-democracy demonstrations.
Key points:
- Zheng Tianci’s kid was separated from his family the day after the Tiananmen Square massacre
- He said he valued the Howard federal government’s efforts to bring his kid to Australia in 1998
- Tiananmen Square dissidents and their households say their activities are still kept track of by China
Zheng Tianci heard the noise of shelling less than 2 kilometres away from his hotel building and went out onto the street with his bicycle, pedalling intensely towards the shooting.
Born in south-western China, Mr Zheng was at that time a widely known political critic writing for Hong Kong papers, and the co-founder of the Chinese Alliance for Person Rights.
Throughout that memorable night in the centre of Beijing, he saw as soldiers fired their automatic weapons straight at the crowd that he remained in.
” Soldiers in helmets holding automatic guns … they contend the crowd directly after firing warning shots.”
The ruthless crackdown against the 1989 Democracy Movement was a turning point, signalling not only an end to free protests in contemporary Chinese history, however likewise the beginning of life in exile for numerous high-profile participants, including Mr Zheng.
Thirty-one years on, the stories of the more than a million trainees who took part in the demonstrations and their demands for democratic reform– now labelled a “counter-revolutionary rebellion” in China– have actually been successfully eliminated from the memories of a number of Chinese citizens
Nevertheless, for the Zheng household, who transferred to Canberra in 1993, their memories of the Tiananmen Square massacre involve not just Government savagery, however likewise a lengthy separation from their youngest relative.
They got away to Australia, but needed to leave their young child behind
