Haiku for the week

Uneven struggle:

Behind barricades they wait,

With bricks against guns.

It's always seemed to me that June 3rd rather than June 4th should be the main focus of commemoration of the 1989 demonstrations in Beijing (and their brutal suppression). Orders to clear Tiananmen Square of protesters had been circulated during the day, and troops began to mobilize in the early evening of the 3rd - leading to a night of rioting across the capital as citizens poured into the streets and improvised scores of roadblocks to try to bar the army's progress into the city centre. The clearing of the Square was not accomplished until the early hours of the morning of the 4th, and sporadic shooting incidents took place in or near the Square - and across much of Beijing - for some time afterwards; but many of the most violent clashes had taken place relatively early on, as the armoured columns  began to move in from the outer suburbs - most notably at Muxidi in west Beijing, where troops fired repeated volleys into a crowd, killing around 200 people.

And sometimes it feels as though we're cowering behind the barricades still; but it's no longer about obstruction and defiance, it's just about hiding for self-preservation; there are mental roadblocks that people erect to prevent themselves from having to confront the truth. There's a lot of fear in this adopted home of mine - fear and apathy and denial.

Today - and tomorrow, this weekend, this week - is a time to reflect on what happened here 22 years ago. And it is a time to hope that it is not yet too late for China's leaders to acknowledge what happened, to apologise for it, to learn from it, to start to heal the wounds - and to pledge that the powers of government here will never be so abused again.