Font size: 
Professor Sun Wenguang, a democratic activist and critic from Shandong University in Jinan, had put up posters on the campus last week inviting students to go to Yingxionshan, where a cemetery and a monument to national revolutionary martyrs are located. He proposed to hold a memorial ceremony for Zhao, who fell from power after refusing to agree to the suppression of student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
Those students were calling for democratic reforms and mourning the death of Hu Yaobang, the previous reformist CCP general secretary, who had died in April of that year.
Both Hu and Zhao were considered reformists within the party and both lost their positions after expressing sympathy for student democratic movements. Hu was forced to step down in January, 1987 following student demonstrations a month earlier. His death two years later was the catalyst for the 1989 student demonstrations that caused Zhao’s downfall. Zhao ended up spending 15 years under house arrest until his death in 2005.
Zhao is never mentioned in Chinese political circles. Chinese search engines block his name and his Chinese page on Wikipedia is blocked within the mainland. A book recording conversations with Zhao in his later years by a friend who was allowed to visit him during his house arrest could only be published outside the mainland.
Besides Hu and Zhao, Professor Sun has advocated paying respects to other national heroes including Sun Yat-sen, who led the democratic cause against the Qing empire, Chiang Kai-shek who fought the war with Japan, and democratic dissidents like Lin Zhao, who lost her life during the Cultural Revolution.
The Chinese people should use a public holiday like Qingming, when the dead are honored, to recall those figures who contributed to Chinese history but have not received proper recognition due to the official distortion of historical facts, Sun said.
Sun said he had paid his respects to Zhao at the memorial in the past without incident. However, this year is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, and authorities are more nervous than usual. Sun’s posters and articles, published on blocked overseas websites, encouraging people to pay their respects to Zhao, apparently touched an official nerve.
Sun’s posters were torn down. On Saturday, police warned Sun not to visit the cemetery, and they reportedly stopped a student from going with him. At least one police car followed Sun to the hillside, but its occupants did nothing when five strong men approached the professor, threw him to the ground and beat him for more than 10 minutes. They finally stopped when a passer-by called an emergency hotline.
Sun is now in the intensive care unit of Qilu Hospital, affiliated with Shandong University, with three broken ribs.
This violent attack has been reported only by overseas media, so far. Chinese police have refused to answer questions about the incident. Through foreign media, Sun has requested that the incident be fully investigated, the criminals punished, and the police held responsible for refusing to intervene. He has suggested that the authorities should cover his medical expenses.
While this event went unreported, there were many news items and photos posted on the official website of Xinhua News Agency describing the "touching and enthusiastic" memorial ceremonies held throughout the country for “revolutionary martyrs,” and for police who died while on duty.
The stories also praised citizens for making “civilized” visits to the graves of their ancestors, and for bringing flowers rather than burning paper offerings, lighting incense and setting off firecrackers, as is traditional among Chinese communities on this holiday.
When the State Council decided in 2008 to reinstate this public holiday – which has a tradition of more than 2,500 years in China, but was discontinued under the communist government – the act was widely applauded. Some people viewed it as a sign that the Chinese Communist Party was ready to respect and restore Chinese culture and traditions as part of its “people-oriented” policy.
Indeed, citizens who visited the graves and monuments of national revolutionary martyrs were praised for “promoting the national spirit.” But in reality, it seems the authorities only allowed those with no “political problems” to proceed with their grave-sweeping activities, and only party-approved national heroes to be remembered.
For those who don’t fit in these categories, simple acts of lighting incense or placing flowers could bring trouble.
For example, although public memorial ceremonies were held for the victims of the earthquake in Sichuan province last May, the parents of children who died in school buildings were forbidden to hold ceremonies outside the schools. Some parents said this was to prevent them from gathering to discuss the truth of that disaster, in which a disproportionate number of schools collapsed. Many armed police were assigned to the disaster area during the three-day holiday to prevent unwanted acts of remembrance.
Meanwhile, several groups of Chinese petitioners were caught in Beijing for attempting to pay their respects to the spirits of those who died in Tiananmen Square, or at the grave of Yang Jia, a young man who was executed for killing six Shanghai police last year, but who is viewed by many Chinese as someone who dared to take revenge against injustice meted out to him.
Of course events are viewed differently by individuals who see them from different angles. It would seem that visiting the graves of those who hold different political beliefs, or holding simple ceremonies for them, should be tolerated in a modern, mature and civilized society.
It took 50 years for the festival of Qingming to be reinstated in China. Perhaps people like Sun will one day be accepted as well.
