March 11, 2016
Photo via @prchovanec
We are appalled by the U. S. presidential candidate Donald Trump’s remarks about the Chinese government’s 1989 massacre during the 12th Republican presidential candidate debate last Thursday, in which he called the heroic pro-democracy protest in Beijing a “riot”, and praised the Chinese government’s response as “strong.” Trump’s comments show not only a lack of moral orientation, but also show a complete disregard for the hundreds if not thousands of innocent lives lost when the Chinese government butchered unarmed students and citizens in Tiananmen Square on June 3-4, 1989.
Many of us participated in that peaceful demonstration, and we know that we were merely exercising our basic rights to protest and our rights for free speech. We petitioned the government to curtail the rampant corruption and start political reform to transition to democracy. That’s all we did. We were patriots, not rioters by any standard. However, the Chinese government labeled this peaceful protest a “riot”, and branded us as common criminals.
But the people in the free world knew better, and in the wake of the 1989 massacre, many world leaders condemned the horrific atrocity. On June 5th of 1989, George H. W.Bush, then president of this great country, publicly condemned the Chinese government’s brutality, rightly pointing out that the peaceful protectors in Beijing were just advocating basic human rights that were enshrined in both the American and Chinese constitutions, and stressing that throughout the world the US always stands with those who seek greater freedom and democracy. President Bush and the U.S. Congress also imposed economic and diplomatic sanctions against the Chinese Communist regime.
All the U.S. presidents since George H. Bush have denounced the violent actions in Tiananmen Square. That’s why the U.S. Department of State each year marks the anniversary of the 1989 crackdown with a statement calling on the Chinese Government to “end harassment of those who participated in the protests and to fully account for those killed, detained, or missing.”
We greatly appreciate the Republican presidential candidate Governor John Kasich’s unequivocal condemnation of the 1989 massacre and his suggestion of establishing a statue to honor the Tank man, an icon and soul of that peaceful protest.
We are also encouraged by and grateful to the other two Republican presidential candidates Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Ted Cruz. Senator Rubio has long been a major voice on Capitol Hill for human rights in China and Senator Ted Cruz introduced the bill in the Senate to rename the plaza in front of the Chinese embassy after Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese democracy leader who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 and has been a political prisoner since 2008.
We believe Mr. Trump is not just irresponsible in choosing his words, but also shows that he still sides with the Chinese dictators like he told Playboy magazine in 1990, and that he still admires the Chinese Communist regime’s “strength” and “power” like he admires fascist Hitler’s. It is obvious to us all that Mr. Trump has betrayed American values and ideas. He is not fit to be the president of the United States.
We demand that Mr. Trump apologize to the victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and their families, and to the millions of people that participated in the peaceful protest, and openly retract his remarks.
公民力量 (Initiatives for China/Citizen Power for China)
人道中國 (Humanitarian China)
民主教育基金會 (Chinese Democracy Education Foundation)
全球支持中國暨亞洲民主化論壇 (Forum for a Democratic China and Asia)
獨立中文筆會 (Independent Chinese Pen Center)
中國共和黨 (China Republican Party)
內蒙古人民黨 (Inner Mongolia People’s Party)
中國民主團結聯盟 (Chinese Alliance for Democracy)
民主中國陣線 (Federation for a Democratic China)
加拿大价值守护者联盟 (Alliance of the Guard of Canadian Values)
民主亚洲基金会 (Asia Democracy Foundation)
民主中國聯合陣線 (Alliance for a Democratic China)
中國大陸”六四”平反促進委員會 (The Mainland China Committee for Reassessment of the Tiananmen Incident)
中國社會民主黨 (China Social Democratic Party)
中國青年民主同盟 (Chinese Democratic Youth League)
中國民主黨海外委員會 (Overseas Committee of Chinese Democratic Party）
普林斯頓中國學社 (Princeton China Initiatives)
全德学者学生会 (The Society of Chinese Students in Germany)
中國綠黨/中國綠社 (China Green Party/Chinese Greens)
香港人民力量 (Hong Kong people’s Power)
北京之春 (Beijing Spring)
歐洲蒙維漢協商會 (European Council of Mongolia-Uyghur-Tibet-China)
歐洲藏漢文化交流會 (European Tibetan Han Cultural Association)
中國民主黨全國聯合總部 (China Democracy Party)
台灣勞工陣線 (Taiwan Labour Front)
齊氏文化基金會 (The Qi’s Cultural Foundation)
台灣關怀中國人權聯盟 (Taiwan Association for China Human Rights)
中國民主黨青年委員會 (Youth Council of China Democracy Party)
Contacts:
楊建利
YANG Jianli
周鋒鎖
ZHOU Fengsuo
方政
FANG Zheng
韓連潮
HAN Lianchao
古懿
Yi Gu
Chinese version: www.yibaochina.com/FileView.aspx?FileIdq=6570
Trump’s outrageously bloody-minded pronouncements of this sort are legion, and his slogan of “America first” is identical to that of know-nothing U.S. isolationists in the 1930s and early 1940s. Trump has never been elected to public office, not even at the level of municipal government, and is utterly unqualified to serve in the country’s top executive office, the presidency.