Tiananmen Still Casts Long Shadow

Tuesday was the first time since Chinese tanks crushed the Tiananmen Square democracy movement on June 4, 1989, that Xiao Zhao spent the anniversary outside a prison.

When Zhao, one of the Tiananmen protest leaders, finished his fifth jail term in seven years for organizing political rallies, he decided that he could no longer live in China. After a midnight phone call in March, he disappeared without telling even his fiancee and, with help from a network of “friends,” arrived on Hong Kong’s shores in a smuggler’s speedboat.

“It’s much freer than China here,” he said at a Hong Kong vigil Tuesday night, gazing at the shimmering candles in the crowd of 10,000 people who came to honor those killed near Tiananmen Square. “Every time I tried to organize this kind of thing around June 4, I got arrested.”

Zhao, which is not his real name, is one of the latest arrivals in Hong Kong on an underground railroad born out of the chaos of Tiananmen. A secret coalition of activists, business people, even gangsters, has spirited China’s most wanted political activists out of the country in special airplanes, speedboats and the trunks of cars.

The network is still necessary seven years later as dissidents such as Zhao trickle across the border into Hong Kong after prison stints or long stretches of harassment and hiding. Once in Hong Kong, they are aided by local human rights groups and political activists, who give them shelter and a bit of money while they wait for political asylum.

But the final escape is still ahead. As the crowd’s candles at the Tuesday night memorial were meant to show, Hong Kong’s freedoms feel ephemeral in the shadow of its 1997 reversion to Chinese rule.

And nowhere is that feeling stronger than among a group of 80 or so fleeing dissidents who have been branded “criminals” by Beijing and must get out of Hong Kong before China takes over--or face prison again.

But countries that embraced about 300 escaped protesters while the blood on Beijing’s streets was still fresh are balking at this later wave--afraid to disrupt trade relations with Beijing that are finally back on track, critics say.

“These people have to get out,” said Robin Munro, the Hong Kong director of Human Rights Watch/Asia. “One Western country could absorb them without even noticing. Instead, the problem has acquired a sensitivity that is way out of proportion, because those governments are so afraid of how China will react.”

Several countries have done more than their share, Munro said, explaining that the United States has taken in the majority of dissidents, especially high-profile leaders who can cause political friction, and that Washington now wants the burden to be shared. France received about 70, and the rest are spread among Britain, Sweden, Denmark and Canada.

“Even if the other countries close their doors, in the end it is the British government’s responsibility,” said Lee Cheuk-yan, the spokesman for a group that cares for the dissidents once they reach Hong Kong. “This is a British colony, and it would be inhumane to leave them behind when Britain leaves in 1997.”

During British Prime Minister John Major’s last visit to Hong Kong, Lee handed him a letter on behalf of 14 asylum-seekers.

“We fled the Chinese mainland to seek the safety and dignity which a society of law alone can provide,” they wrote. “We must find asylum in a third country” before 1997.

One of the 14 who signed the letter gave her name as Zhang Jing and her age as 34, although she changed both in her attempt to throw off Chinese authorities.

Jailed for a year in 1978 with other founders of China’s democracy movement, then several times in the 1980s, she spent a total of five years in prison.

After her release, she was “deprived of her political rights,” which meant that she wasn’t allowed to marry and that the child she was carrying was deemed “illegal.” She defied authorities and married anyway, but to escape a forced abortion and continued persecution, she fled to Hong Kong. There she is waiting--with her 4-year-old daughter--to get out of the country before she faces harassment or prison again after 1997.

From her backpack on Tuesday, Zhang extracted a reply to the asylum-seekers’ appeal from 10 Downing St. in London.

“The prime minister understands and sympathizes with the concerns explained in your letter,” it began. Zhang sighed and dropped it on the table. “It feels empty to me,” she said. “There are no concrete promises there.”

Zhang said she worries most about her family. When she left China, she promised her husband she would give up her political activities. But, she said: “This is me. I went to prison because I believe in this, and I can’t just give it up.”

She still attends protest rallies in Hong Kong, though she always wears a large hat and sunglasses to disguise her face. Her husband has filed for divorce.

“I don’t want my daughter to be hurt,” she said. “Someday I will tell her about what I did and hope she takes over the battle.”

Zhang stands up to prepare for the June 4 memorial rally, sliding on her sunglasses and tying her hat string in a bow under her chin. “We have to go. But someday, we’ll be back.”