Asia Times and a Visit from Elizabeth Pisani
My old friend Elizabeth Pisani breezed into town this weekend. She's recuperating in my guest bedroom right now. I met her when I was working in Bangkok for the original Asia Times.
She's known for many things, among them her reporting from Tiananmen Square in April, 1989. She wrote an essay about it 20 years later reflecting on memory, history and journalism. It's well worth reading.
... There were two other civilians on foot ahead of me going in the same direction. It wasn’t until the second one crumpled before my eyes, a blow-up doll deflated by a bullet from a figure who’d popped out of a hatch in the APC closest to us, that my brain put the two parts of the picture together and realized that they didn’t match. I turned tail and pedalled furiously back down the side of the Square to Graham. I still have the image in my mind of a kid in a white coat, a medical student, who was scooping a fallen body up on to the flatbed of a transport tricycle. I seem to remember a white hatchback with a red cross on it and the incongruous words: GIFT FROM THE PEOPLE OF ITALY. I saw a tank, definitely a tank, roll over a pack of bicycles, and found myself worrying that mine might be in the mangle. I worried too, about Graham, who couldn’t run very fast, who needed somewhere safe to wait out the chaos.
He was still where I’d left him, on the side of the Square close to the history museum.We set off together down another side alley, this time to the south-east. More dead payphones. Much chaos. A family had opened the gates to a compound and they let Graham in, grudgingly.
I had to file the story, but I also had my editor sitting on my shoulder whispering ‘dead is not good’ ...
We were talking about the world's memorialization of September 11 last night. She noted, acidly, that no one had memorialized the victims of Tiananmen Square ten years after the fact.
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Jun '10
Re: Asia Times and a Visit from Elizabeth Pisani
Tiananmen was another reminder that not all "great civilizations" are great, or even civil.
Sep '11
Re: Asia Times and a Visit from Elizabeth Pisani
We should definitely do something to remember the victims of Tiananmen Square, and all Chinese dissidents.
Sep '11
Re: Asia Times and a Visit from Elizabeth Pisani
Maybe we could each organize candle light vigils in our own areas on June 4th of every year. Is there anyone on Ricochet from Western Mass who would be interested in attending?
Feb '11
Re: Asia Times and a Visit from Elizabeth Pisani
Undoubtedly your friend's observation that the government in China failed to honor its massacred citizens ten years after the fact is correct. But a quick Google search appears to show that there was plenty of print/media recognition. Apparently the Chinese authorities remembered the date 20 years after. And Hong Kong has an annual vigil in remembrance.
Edited on Sep 12, 2011 at 8:14am