AUGUST 27, 2014 6:00 PMAugust 27, 2014 6:00 pm
Army tanks hold positions on an overpass in Beijing on June 6, 1989, two days after the crushing of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.Credit Vincent Yu/Associated Press
The military suppression of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests in June 1989 was a ‘‘one-off’’ in China’s recent history. Its leaders lost control of the situation. China is freer today than in 1989. Its people have the right to forget.
That was the gist of recent articles by Frank Sieren, a Beijing-based German media consultant and columnist for Deutsche Welle, a German state-run broadcaster, the first of which ran on the station’s website on June 4, the 25th anniversary of the killings in Beijing.
They prompted outrage among Chinese political exiles and rights activists in Germany, and an impassioned exchange ensued on the broadcaster’s website between Mr. Sieren and Chang Ping, a Chinese journalist.
The dispute raises questions that go to the heart of ideas of historical crimes and responsibility: Can a massacre and its aftermath — hundreds, possibly thousands, died in Beijing — ever be explained, even excused, in this way?
‘‘The massacre of June 4, 1989, was no one-off,’’ ran the headline of Mr. Chang’s first retort. Mr. Chang is a former editor at a Chinese newspaper, Southern Weekly, and his writings have been banned by the authorities.
Instead, the killings showed a ‘‘systematic continuity’’ in the nature of Communist Party rule that persists to this day, he wrote, citing the state’s vast ‘‘stability maintenance’’ program, which snares common criminals, justice-seekers and political dissidents alike.
Censorship means Chinese are not allowed to remember what happened, Mr. Chang wrote: How can they have the right to forget, if they don’t even have the right to remember?
Germany is proud of how it has dealt with its own troubled history, a process known as ‘‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung,’’ or ‘‘coming to terms with the past.’’ Its historians track such issues closely. Some historians see in the debate over Tiananmen echoes of Germany’s struggles with fascism and Communism.
