A historic day in Tiananmen Square.

Today is shaping up to be a big and strange day on the human rights front. Between the 20th anniversary of the June 4 massacre at Tiananmen Square in China, President Obama’s speech in Cairo and the trial of the two Americans detained in North Korea, we have a showcase of the complexity of promoting human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

The pursuit of American values in foreign policy has always been half-assed compromised, at best. Other national interests, like security or financial gain, have pushed our better angels aside on a regular basis.

We want cheap oil and assistance with regional crises, so we look past the fact that Saudi Arabia, where President Obama was yesterday, offers no guarantee for freedom of religion, greatly restricts the media, tolerates widespread violence against women and doesn’t allow them to drive cars or go out in public without being completely covered. Egypt, a staunch U.S. ally that President Obama visits today, is a democracy in name only, and houses thousands of political prisoners.

I could go on. America does act on principle, but generally when other interests are not skewered by our doing so (though, in my book, that is better than never acting on principle).

The globalization of threats exacerbates this dynamic. Some of the same countries that brutalize their citizens and reject pluralism are our necessary partners on global challenges that daily affect our security
and prosperity.

China is the poster child for this quandry, as I recently wrote about with Bill Schulz, who headed Amnesty International for 12 years.  Figuring out how to improve human rights there from the outside, while never easy or effective, has only gotten more vexing since the pro-democracy protesters were quashed in Tiananmen Square.

China holds keys to many of the foreign policy challenges facing the Obama administration and, indeed, the world. For evidence, look at the recent travel schedules of high-level U.S. officials. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was in China this week, because the size of China’s stimulus package and the pace of its evolution to a domestic-led growth model are critical factors in getting the global economy back on its feet. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to China last week to discuss climate — China is now the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world; together, the U.S. and China account for 40 percent of emissions.   We can’t lick global warming without China’s serious engagement.  Yesterday, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg discussed North Korea’s nuclear program with leaders in Beijing. China is North Korea’s major trading partner, controlling some 70 to 90 percent of North Korea’s fuel supply; if anyone can drag Pyongyang back to the negotiating table, it is China. 

In the last twenty years, while standards of living in China have risen dramatically, political reform has stalled out and dissidents continue to live in terror. This is kind of like knowing your fellow firefighter, a generally competent professional, goes home and beats his wife.  That is gut-wrenching, but are you going to turn down his help holding the hose when a fire threatens your town?

It is not that we have less leverage now because of our interdependency — interdependency works both ways, after all.  The fact is that we have never have had much traction to influence the internal political workings of a large, proud and complex country. And now, we have many more areas in which our fates are intertwined. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointed out early on, we cannot let our dialogue on human rights prevent progress on other fronts.

There are steps we can take to continue to support incremental progress on rights and pluralism in China, as Bill and I discuss in our article and that he explores in a recent report. In addition to those, which include making common cause with other nations who share our concerns, it is also important to continue to articulate our values. It gives succor to those brave souls on the ground who are trying to fight oppression and, more importantly, it reminds us that if we want our words to be taken seriously, we need to keep our own record on human rights and democracy as clean as they can be.

- Nina Hachigian

Umbrellas block the view of Tiananmen Square on the 20th anniversary of a bloody crackdown there.

On June 4, two decades ago, the Chinese government ordered its soldiers to open fire on demonstrators calling for democracy in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

On Thursday, the anniversary of that bloody day in 1989, there were no activists or student protesters to be seen — only members of the People’s Army. Security was kept tight and foreign journalists were not granted permission for entrance to the square.

Blogger “Hugh” at ”Zhongnanhai” is a journalist who has been living and working in China since 2004. He visits Tiananmen Square on the anniversary and describes the heavy security:

THE SQUARE ON JUNE 4 - 20 YEARS LATER

I hadn’t planned to mark this June 4th in Beijing in any particular way. But work ended early, and my subway trip home takes me directly under Tiananmen Square. At a time when the younger generation in China has little or no idea what happened in the capital 20 years ago, and the older generations just want to forget about it, I decided a stop at the infamous landmark was in order.

As I ascended from Tiananmen West station, the first thing I expected to see was an immense amount of security — and I wasn’t disappointed. Amid the thinner-than-usual crowds were the usual contingent of local police and slow marching PLA soldiers. On any given day in Tiananmen, you will also see a healthy smattering of plain clothes security personnel. Today there were legions of them. Aside from the standard issue dress shirt and slacks, they weren’t even trying to blend in. If the rather large CPC pins they were each wearing wasn’t a give away, then the rather girlish summer umbrellas each of them was carrying certainly was. Altogether, the number of security personnel easily matched the number of tourists. As I strolled eastward, I glanced back to see if I was being followed. I don’t think I was. It wouldn’t have mattered though, since each plain clothes cop was stationed about ten feet away from the next one. Their penetrating, suspicious-of-anything eyes followed every step I took.

Just past the looming portrait of Mao, I stopped for a moment and surveyed the area to the south. I remembered that famous photo of the man in front of a line of tanks, taken just meters away from where I was standing.

[...]As I approached the entrance to Tiananmen East station, the only public display of grief I saw was a young lady crouched on the sidewalk next to a lamppost. She had her face cupped in her hand, but instead of remembering the hundreds — possibly thousands — of students and workers who were indiscriminately gunned down here 20 years ago, I suspect she was simply trying to cope with a mild case of heatstroke.

Twenty years after an event here that shook the world, everything at Tiananmen Square seems pretty quiet and under control. Just the way the government wants it.

To read more, see the original post.

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Photo courtesy of Flickr user flippy whale under a Creative Commons license.

In 1989, China’s government attempted to block reports of its brutal crackdown on the demonstrators. Now, China is once again shutting off access and trying to downplay signs of new civil disobedience.

The Tiananmen Square protests were led largely by young students, and one of their leaders was Shen Tong. He fled his homeland six days after government troops opened fire on the protestors on June 4, 1989 and is now a businessman in New York.

Shen Tong joins Martin Savidge for a look back at the pro-democracy protests and how they have and have not changed China.