Zhou Fengsuo wants the world to understand that Tiananmen represents more than the violence that occurred there. It’s also a symbol of optimism and the fight for freedom in China. [Chinese captions] 中文字幕
WATCH VIDEO: “It was the moment that we realized, and the world witnessed that Chinese people love freedom and democracy, and they are so willing to sacrifice their life for it.”
Thirty five years ago, on June 4, 1989, the Chinese government brutally crushed the protests in Tiananmen Square. Zhou Fengsuo, a Tiananmen student leader whose activism landed him on China’s most wanted list, wants to make sure the world doesn’t forget what happened that day.
Zhou Fengsuo: It was like a war. I was at the center at Tiananmen Square. I heard gunshots from all places.
Voice-over of news anchor: — by whatever means necessary.
Voice-over of news anchor: — attack on the defenseless tens of thousands of students.
CBS News anchor Dan Rather: No one knows how many people have died in the crackdown. We may never know.
CBS News footage: The Army moved in with a vengeance, at some points firing into the crowd before they actually got to the square.
ABC News footage: The Chinese Red Cross estimates that between 2,000 and 2500 people have been killed this weekend.
CBS News footage: In Beijing, they cried for the dead.
Zhou Fengsuo: My name is Zhou Fengsuo. I was a Tiananmen student leader in 1989.
CNN News footage: There has never been a challenge to the leadership of communist China like this one.
Zhou Fengsuo: That's when I started my journey as an activist. 35 years ago, I went to Tiananmen Square to lay a flower wreath for Hu Yaobang, who died as a symbol for reform and openness in China. Purged by Communist Party hardliners two and a half years ago for his liberal views. I was a physics student, but I was voracious reader. I was very interested in social issues, even before this protest. I was running the broadcast station at the center of Tiananmen Square. Every day hundreds of thousands of people would come to Tiananmen Square. It's like, all of sudden, the repressed words in people's heart like burst out.
CNN News footage of protesters chanting: — Long live freedom! Long live freedom! Punish corrupt officials.
Zhou Fengsuo: We all had this feeling that freedom was within reach.
ITN News interview with a student protester: The students want democracy — freedom.
Zhou Fengsuo: The protest, even though it was led by the students, uh it was widely supported from all walks of society. The protest was very peaceful. At some time, even the police were joining us.
CBS News footage: In some cases, the students and the soldiers were singing together.
Zhou Fengsuo: It was a place for family, not a place for the brutal violence.
BBC News footage: Late in the evening, Premier Lee appeared on nationwide television to announce that the situation was out of control, and that the Army was being called in to restore order.
ABC News footage: Last night, Chinese Army troops were sent into the capital to crush what the government called a small band of hooligans and gangsters.
CBS News footage: Through the night, there was so much shooting, so many people wounded, so many people dead.
ABC News footage: They fired automatic weapons into crowds of citizens who for the most part could fight back with nothing more than rocks and bottles. It is difficult not to use the word “massacre” to describe what happened.
Zhou Fengsuo: Even when the tanks were coming in — when they were being shot at, people were trying to help each other.
CBS News footage: The students used what they had — rocks sometimes, sometimes swords.
Zhou Fengsuo: People were standing in front of tanks so that they can block the troops. So that people like us could be protected. This kind of courage — that's what we must remember.
CBS News footage: Despite the continuing killing, civilians resist — with sticks and stones and raw courage and rage.
Zhou Fengsuo: As the wounded the people being carried on vehicles, on people’s shoulders, I saw 40 bodies in a bicycle garage outside of a hospital because the hospital was so overwhelmed with the people who were died or wounded that they had to place these bodies outside.
CBS News footage: And there are now credible reports of soldiers who have set their own vehicles on fire and withdrawn in disgust at making war on their own people.
Zhou Fengsuo: You know that’s how later the world realized what’s happening — by looking at the image like the tank man alone, and the Goddess of Democracy.
BBC News footage: They dragged down the statue of the Goddess of Democracy.
Zhou Fengsuo: That was the situation, and that's what, uh uh, the world remembers and the CCP has been trying to erase from memory.
BBC News footage: No one knows the death toll, even today. Estimates run from several hundred to over 10,000.
Zhou Fengsuo: After the Tiananmen massacre, the government issued a “most wanted” list of the student leaders. I saw myself as number five. I was surprised, but I was also proud — profoundly — at this because I believe in what I went through. What I did was justified. Was also what I'm willing to give up everything for. I was in Qincheng Prison for a year. We were treated even worse than the normal criminals. I was handcuffed three months nonstop. I was never given enough food. While I was there for a year, I was let out less than 10 days to see the outside, to breathe in the fresh air. I was sick for most of the time. I was released at about one year anniversary, and after that I was denied passport for a few years, until 1995, I was given passport and allowed to leave China. So I came to United States in 1995. I was able to start my own human rights organization, “Humanitarian China”. After coming here, I realize there's a very strong influence here to legitimize the CCP regime, and that's what I have been fighting against since I came to United States. I think of free speech as god-given. It's just natural. But for us, we learned it from the negative side because when I grew up, every day we were taught about what to talk about, what not to talk about, what to think, what not to think.
CNN News footage: Students started a hunger strike, marching through Beijing.
Zhou Fengsuo: For me, any regime that restrict free speech means they have something to hide because that’s only way for us to communicate, to know the truth, to learn from each other — by free speech.
ITN News footage: What we want is only the Democracy. Only the freedom of the speech.
Zhou Fengsuo: Of course, on the other side, communist China has been very successful, for example, in indoctrinating Chinese people, especially after Tiananmen massacre. The middle class into believing that free speech doesn't matter.
News footage: Soldiers appeared in the streets around Tiananmen Square where thousands of students
Zhou Fengsuo: Tiananmen is important because it's hope. It was the moment that we realized, and the world witness, that Chinese people love freedom and democracy.
CBS News footage: Columns of tanks occasionally rove out of the city center, often firing wildly at civilians through the night.
Zhou Fengsuo: And they’re so willing to sacrifice their life.