Tiananmen Square’s Unremembered Victims

On the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in which Chinese government troops killed and arrested thousands of civilian pro-democracy protestors, Vera Schwarcz, the Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies, writes in the Jewish Ledger about the importance of remembering these events. Even today, she writes, the government is arresting those who attempt to discuss the history behind the events on June 4, 1989, leading to an entire generation who is unaware of the massacre.

Schwarcz writes: “The Jewish prayer of Kaddish does not mention the dead. Instead it praises the Creator whose name is synonymous with truth. The mothers who lost sons and daughters in Tiananmen Square cannot say words of Kaddish.  Not simply because the words of the ancient prayer are unfamiliar to them. Also because the government forbids any mention of those who died in the dark night when tanks plowed into the ranks of unarmed protesters weakened by a hunger strike and waning hopes for the reform of the regime.”