Tiananmen Square commemoration
Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (12:56): June the 4th is a date stained with the blood of martyrs. It marks the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Protests began in Tiananmen Square in mid-April 1989, challenging the legitimacy of China’s one-party system. The protest was led by students, and more than a million people gathered to demand greater accountability, democracy and free speech. With protests spreading to hundreds of cities across the country the Chinese Communist Party panicked. On 20 May the state council declared martial law, with 300 000 troops being deployed to Beijing. On 4 June soldiers marched into the square and slaughtered the demonstrators. Those who were not murdered were arrested, foreign journalists were expelled and media coverage was strictly controlled. Even now the history of the incident is suppressed in China. We cannot know how many were massacred, but there were tens of thousands of people in the square when the shooting began. The party purged anyone sympathetic to freedom, and China sank deeper into authoritarianism.
1989 was a global turning point for the failed genocidal ideology of communism. Eastern European countries chose democracy and freedom, China instead lurched into national socialism. China’s extremism continues, as displayed by the genocide in Xinjiang and their irrational, anti-human COVID response. In China freedom has no value. People are just something to be crushed if they get in the way of government objectives. What we learn from Tiananmen is that governments cannot be trusted to protect our rights, our liberties or our lives. Governments do not keep us safe; they are the thing that we need protection from.