Imagethief discusses (ESWN, too) the boot-licking performance last week of Ma Lik, leader of a pro-PRC political party in Hong Kong. Mr. Ma stated, in remarks in Beijing, that we should not refer to the Beijing massacre of 1989 as a "massacre:"
"We should not say the Communist Party massacred people on June 4. I never said that nobody was killed, but it was not a massacre," Mr. Ma told a media gathering less than three weeks before the 18th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on protesting students. "A massacre would mean the Communist Party intentionally killed people with machine guns indiscriminately."
It is inaccurate to refer to the killings of June 3-4, 1989 as the "Tiananmen Square Massacre," because most of those killed were massacred in other parts of Beijing:
The phrase "Tiananmen Square massacre" is now fixed firmly in the political vocabulary of the late twentieth century. Yet it is inaccurate. There was no massacre in Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3. But on the western approach roads, along Chang'an Boulevard and Fuxingmen Avenue, there was a bloodbath that claimed hundreds of lives when the People's Liberation Army found its path blocked by a popular uprising that was being fueled by despair and rage. To insist on this distinction is not splitting hairs. What took place was the slaughter not of students but of ordinary workers and residents - precisely the target that the Chinese government had intended.
The crackdown, which likely killed hundreds of people (exact numbers are impossible because the PRC government does not allow honest analysis) obviously qualifies as a "massacre" or "slaughter."
As Imagethief points out, Mr. Ma has two purposes. One is an attempt to falsely "rectify names." In good Confucian style, Ma is trying to claim that the name "massacre" does not fit the reality of what happened in Beijing in those terrible days. But he will fail in this because the truth is well documented and brave people, like the Tiananmen Mothers, work hard to keep the name "massacre" firmly affixed to the June 3-4 killings in Beijing. Ma is thus simply a sower of insincerity - which might sound like a mild critique but it is, for a Confucian, a sign of deep and fundamental moral failing.
Ma's second purpose is to align himself with those political forces in Beijing that seek to maintain limits on democracy in Hong Kong. He argues that Hong Kong is "not ready" for democracy because the public there continues to mourn and remember the Beijing massacre of 1989. His "argument" is, of course, a pathetic rationalization for authoritarianism, a transparent attempt to ingratiate himself with Beijing power-holders in the run-up to the 18th anniversary of June 4th.
Hong Kong is certainly "ready" for democracy, on any socio-economic or political dimension that matters. It is Mr. Ma who is not.
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