Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre
My song to mark the massacre that happened in Tiananmen Square on 4th June 1989.
On June 4 1989 the Chinese government sent tanks and troops to open fire on thousands of students who were occupying Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Hundreds, maybe thousands were killed or injured. We do not know, because the government has never released the figures. We do know it responded to the student demand for greater democracy with tanks and live bullets.
The occupation of Tiananmen Square was the culmination of a democracy movement which had been gathering pace in China throughout the 1980s and which came to ahead in the spring of 1989.
In the 30 years since, the government of the People’s Republic of China has sought to erase this event from their history. Across the world efforts are made to ensure it does not succeed.
TIAN-AN-MEN (‘Ruler Silence Gate’)
BEIJING – June the fourth eighty nine, summer almost set on fire
PEOPLE – in the square we came to be, wanting freedoms on tv
RISING LIKE A LION – please, tell the world
A FLOWER – that we were here
LIKE YOU, once
PAPER – watch the tv, news at ten: it’s a movie: See En En
FREEDOM – moving shadows on the wall, the ratings war will kill ’em all,
FALLING LIKE A STATUE – who’s making the news?
A SHADOW – who’s behind the tv?
NOT YOU
GO TO SLEEP
(shhh, go to sleep),
CLOSE YOUR EYES,
TRUST IN US,
REST IN PEACE
MOVING – the bodies brought prosperity, a shiny lying new elite
VIOLENCE – like a brothel built on graves, foreign hands will strip them
FASTER THAN MERCEDES – ordinary life
THAN NIKE – run down 2nite
SWOOSH
GO TO SLEEP,
TRUST IN U.S.,
CLOSE YOUR EYES
HISTORY
“we were just stones
just stones (enchanted stones),
stones under water. we were like
one hundred flowers,
Burst into fire!
The time will come, it’s Now”
SPEECHLESS – we wanted to make history, but we only made tv
EVIL – now there’s nothing left to say, every life has been erased
ON GOOGLE – our mouths are graves
DOT CN – searching in vain
FOR YOU
GO TO SLEEP,
CLOSE YOUR EYES,
OUR TIME WILL COME,
WE WILL RISE,
AGAIN
My photos of the commemoration of the Tiananmen Square Massacre at the Chinese Embassy in London
Kate Adie’s original report BBC of the massacre:
thehumandivinedotorg 