This Day in 1989: July 2, 1989, Deng Xiaoping Awards Ten "Republican Guard"

On July 2, 1989, Central Military Chairman Deng Xiaoping signed an order to award the honor of "Republican Guard" titles to ten martial law troop soldiers who had died "in the hands of hooligans and rioters" during the massacre.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: July 27, 1989, Twelve "Republican Guard" Honored

On July 27, 1989, Deng Xiaoping signed separate military orders to award a total of 12 soldiers, including two posthumously, the honor of "Republican Guard," for their bravery and sacrifice "against hooligans and rioters" during the night of Tianannmen Massacre.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: July 18, 1989, Two “Republican Guard" Announced

On July 18, 1989, Chinese government announced that Li Guorui (李国瑞) and Liu Yanpo (刘艳坡) have been posthumously awarded the honor as "Republican Guard." The order stated that the two soldiers were killed by "hooligans" during the night of Tiananmen Massacre.


Days of 1989

Days of 1989: June 22, Beijing Executes 7 Rioters

On June 22, 1989, seven people accused of participating in the "counter-revolutionary riot" on June 4, 1989 were executed in Beijing.

They were initially sentenced to death by a middle court on June 17. In mere five days, their appeals to high court was rejected and the sentences were carried out.


Days of 1989

Struggle to Survive after Tiananmen

The Associated Press reported the lives of several former workers who had been caught in the mayhem of the night of the massacre and sentenced to many years in prison. They continued to struggle even after serving out of the terms.

One of them said in the article:

Zhang said he and others rounded up after June 4 are ''history's sacrificial lambs.''

''The students didn't face any serious consequences. They went back to school and were dealt with there, with reeducation classes. But we were punished for the students to see ... because the government needed to restore social order,'' he said.

The article concluded that the there were an estimated 50 to 200 Tiananmen prisoners still in jail, twenty years after the event.

NYT Archive 1989: Massive Arrests in Beijing

On June 11, 1989, New York Times reported that the Chinese government had announced that 400 people had been arrested for participating in the democracy movement. The only one named was student leader Guo Haifeng:

The television news program said that student leaders had been arrested, although it named only one student from Beijing University. The news tonight reported the apprehension of Guo Haifeng, a member of the standing committee of the recently formed independent student union.

''He was arrested just as he and a group of rioters were about to burn an armored personnel carrier,'' the announcer said, without indicating on which day the arrest took place. Nor did he say what kind of punishment the students would receive, and called upon other student leaders to turn themselves in.

''Those leaders who have not been arrested should go to the public security organization and surrender themselves so that they may be dealt with leniently,'' the state television broadcast said. ''Those who refuse to surrender themselves will be arrested and dealt with seriously.''

Guo Haifeng was one of the three students who had staged a kneeling-down petition at Hu Yaobang's funeral. In the early morning of June 4, he was in a bus with several people making Motolov bombs when the bus driver was shot dead and all of them captured by soldiers. He was initially charged for attempting to burn an armed personnel carrier and even destroy Tiananmen itself. But these were eventually dropped for lack of evidence. He was later sentenced for four years on lesser charges.

Presumably, the vast majority of the unnamed arrestees were "rioters and hooligans", who had bravely resisted the advance of the martial law troops. They received much more severe punishments than the students.

NYT Archive 1989: The Beginning Of The End

The crackdown started several days before the massacre. Just as in the case of the massacre itself, it was not the students in the Tiananmen Square who bore the brunt of the hit. On May 31, 1989, New York Times reported the first aggressive move by the government:

The Government said today that it had arrested 11 workers involved in China's democracy movement, and official news programs bitterly condemned a copy of the Statue of Liberty that students put up in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.

The arrests were apparently the first since the democracy movement began in mid-April and were the clearest sign so far of a crackdown against participants in the movement. Since the unrest began, the Government has been sternly announcing crackdowns, only to balk before the actions can be carried out.

The 11 people arrested were leaders of a motorcycle club that played an important role in the recent demonstrations. The official New China News Agency reported that they had been arrested for disturbing the public order. The Beijing Daily News said the club had been disbanded.

The "motorcycle club" was a band of several hundreds motorcycles who had roamed the streets of Beijing since the martial law. Paying homage to a group of dare-devil Americans who had helped China during the World War II, they called themselves the Flying Tigers.

They were not your average workers either, who would not be able to afford a motorcycle in China of the late 1980s. Most of them were young entrepreneurs who had answered Deng Xiaoping's call of reform and got rich first. They were not a well respected bunch, mostly because their semi-illiterate status and arrogance with money. But in 1989, they came out en force with their motorcycles, serving as the scouts and information carriers. They were instrumental in the success of blocking the martial law troops in the outskirt of city.

In the government's view, they were all just a bunch of "hooligans and rioters". They were also the easiest target to hit. For all they had done for the movement, they were still viewed as outsiders.

Other arrests were also being made, again targeting workers instead of students:

About 1,000 people today attended a rally in front of police offices called by an independent workers union to protest what it said was the arrest of three union leaders. The police would not confirm the arrests, which were in addition to the 11 acknowledged by the authorities.

''You snatch our people stealthily; you have been unmasked,'' read a banner held by the demonstrators in front of the State Security Bureau. The five-day-old union says it has thousands of supporters in the capital, and the Government seems to have been even more worried about the risks of worker protests than of student demonstrations.

Dozens Still Prisoned for Tiananmen Protests

It's been more than 18 years since the 1989 Tiananmen protest and it's believed that all political prisoners from that event have since been released, exiled, or passed away. However, it is also known that many participants, who are neither students nor intellectuals, were still kept in prison for participating in the more violent acts of the movements, such as arson, beating, or damaging public properties.

They are the hooligans and rioters (暴徒) of the movement. It is difficult to ascertain their motives for the violence. It could range from attempting to protect the demonstrating students, emotional vengeance, or personal. Their fates had not been a public focus in the aftermath of Tiananmen.

In a speech at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong, the human rights activist John Kamm asserted that he now believes "there are somewhere between 60 to 100 people still imprisoned for offences committed during the protests that swept the country between April and June 1989". A year ago, he had estimated the number was between 200 and 300. Some people had been released over the last six months.

John Kamm's speech included a few names and their cases for both the released and still detained. He says:

We know of the existence of these men because Chinese journalists inserted their names in newspapers and other official publications, and dedicated researchers like Mickey Spiegel of Human Rights Watch in New York, Robin Munro now of China Labor Bulletin in Hong Kong, and Joshua Rosenzweig and his Dui Hua researchers in San Francisco found and published their names. It has fallen to me to submit lists of their names to the Chinese government, confident that by doing so their chances of better treatment and early release are improved. Even today, Dui Hua still finds previously unknown names of people detained in the spring 1989 protests. To date, we and other NGOs have found hundreds of such name

and

China’s June Fourth prisoners are now middle-aged men who have spent their entire adult lives in prison. The protests for which they have been sentenced would, for the most part, today be called “mass incidents.” Most would likely be fined and given relatively short sentences. Those serving sentences for counterrevolution and hooliganism form a special group: these “crimes” were removed from China’s Criminal Law in 1997. They are serving sentences for crimes that no longer exist.

John Kamm and his Dui Hua (Dialog) Foundation calls for China to have an "Olympics amnesty" to release these counterrevolutionaries and hooligans.