Co-organizer: Jinan Church, Presbyterian Church in Taiwan
Event & livestream page: https://reurl.cc/nY6NLl
Closing Session: A June 4th Survivor’s Life Story
This talk was the closing session of the lecture series. June 4th survivor Wu Renhua shared how he fled China after the 1989 massacre, a departure that changed the course of his life, and drew on both a survivor’s perspective and years of relentless work compiling records of the massacre to explain how the Chinese Communist Party controls Chinese society through its institutions and legal system, monitoring and suppressing people to constrain their freedom. To this day, Beijing continues to use tight surveillance and authoritarian rule to repress its own citizens at home while extending transnational repression abroad against exiled democracy activists and solidarity communities, and to impose “stability maintenance” on Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Hong Kongers.
Beyond this, united-front work and political pressure against Taiwan are also intensifying. With many young people from Hong Kong and Taiwan in the audience, Wu Renhua drew on decades of research and lived experience to discuss with attendees how democratic Taiwan can make itself count in influencing China, extending the discussion to the impact of Hong Kong’s loss of democracy on its people and the world, and to how, using Taiwan as a base, we might support China’s democratization and help China break free of authoritarianism.
Speakers
- Wu Renhua: Now based in Taiwan, where he teaches a course on researching the truth of the June 4th incident at Soochow University and National Chung Cheng University. A scholar of historical documents, and a participant in and witness to the 1989 democracy movement, he has long worked to collect records of the Tiananmen massacre and to trace those arrested, those killed, and those responsible. His books include The Bloody Clearing of Tiananmen Square, Declassifying the June 4th Massacre: The Martial Law Troops of the June 4th Incident, and A Day-by-Day Record of the Tiananmen Incident.