Chinese Police Stage Kangaroo Courts to Justify Tiananmen Bloodshed

by Richard S. Ehrlich

BEIJING, China -- Secret police are staging nationally televised kangaroo courts in which handcuffed, cowed and sometimes beaten Tiananmen Square protesters are interrogated at gunpoint after being caught by troops, informers or seen in foreign news broadcasts denouncing the government.

Some suspects are shown hurriedly handcuffed to trees after being captured by troops.

Others, their faces puffy, bruised or slashed, are shown being forced into wooden chairs, in bleak rooms under harsh lights, where they listen to accusations by angry secret police officers.

The detained men shown on Chinese television are always bent-over double, their hands tied in front of them, while being shoved along by two or three cops who do not allow the victim to stand up or raise his head.

When the suspect is brought before a make-shift tribunal of several uniformed police, the guards yank his hair to force his head up and, while two other guards grab him by the scruff of the neck, he is filmed listening to the charges, answering questions and -- in some cases -- confessing or signing documents.

The victim is then led away.

The prisoner's fate is not revealed.

Chinese TV has been broadcasting such footage monotonously over and over again, splicing together similar interrogations in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Langzhou, Changsha, Guangzhou, Jinan and other cities.

The aim is apparently two-fold: to justify the army's slaughter of more than 1,000 civilians last weekend while crushing the pro-democracy demonstration in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and also to terrify the population so they do not lend their support to the movement.

The suspects are all described as "ruffians," "hooligans" or "counter-revolutionaries."

China traditionally does not allow fair or open trials, according to London-based Amnesty International and other human rights organizations.

The punishment for anti-government behavior is usually lengthy imprisonment in brutal labor camps, or execution by a bullet to the back of the head.

The government then sends a bill to the executed person's family, to pay for the bullet.

Television footage of one man -- who was recently filmed by the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) news network describing the army's killing of civilians -- was shown on China's government-controlled stations with a caption warning viewers that he was a "rumor monger" on the run, and must be hunted down.

Shortly after the government-captioned ABC footage was shown throughout China, the man was arrested and appeared on Chinese TV in an interrogation room, "confessing" his "crime."

The obviously terrified man told the police during the interrogation, "People like me, who are spreading rumors, should stop so as not to cause more trouble.

"I would do anything to make up for the trouble I caused, because I did not really see the things which I said I saw," the man added.

He was identified as Xiao Bin, a factory sales chief from the northern city of Dalian.

The Chinese government monitored all satellite transmission of ABC's footage when it was sent from its correspondents in Beijing back to ABC's editorial room in the United States, via the Chinese government's transmission unit.

ABC correspondents in Beijing condemned the Chinese government's use of their news footage as evidence against people in the latest crackdown.

When one dissident Chinese in Beijing was told of the incident, he said, "It's terrifying. The reporters should have realized this would happen. They shouldn't be showing people's faces during interviews."

The incident is especially dangerous because during the past month of protests in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in China, thousands of people have been filmed by foreign television, magazine and newspaper photographers.

The Chinese authorities are believed to be going through countless foreign publications, and other foreign TV footage, to collect pictures of all protesters -- to be distributed as wanted posters in neighborhoods throughout Beijing and elsewhere.

For many Chinese, the only reports of the Tiananmen Square massacre by troops comes from the government's TV and radio.

Chinese TV interviews people who only produce quotes condemning the pro-democracy movement.

One Chinese analyst said, "People in China know to say anything that the government expects them to, especially in cases like this.

"If the government holds up a piece of white paper and says it is black, people will say it's black. It's that simple."

He suspected the factory workers, farmers and others now appearing on TV were parroting the party line when interviewed at their work places.

Many anti-government students, who led the pro-democracy movement and survived, said they would go to their hometowns in the countryside and spread "the truth," because they knew a propaganda war had started against them.

Chinese TV, meanwhile, continues to show groups of sullen-faced men, their shirts unexplainably unbuttoned, being barked at by interrogators and charged with looting, arson, attacking vehicles or fighting with the army.

Ruthless hardliners among China's political leaders, meanwhile, appear to have emerged on top as a result of the Tiananmen Square violence.

But many Chinese, whether sympathetic to demands for greater liberty or not, are waiting for the inevitable death of hardline leader Deng Xiaoping, who congratulated the army's bloodbath at Tiananmen Square.

Deng's passing from the scene will force the hardliners and moderates within the political leadership and military to clash, Western diplomats predict.

The winner may either be reformists who are able to free China from its slide towards greater repression, or hardliners bent on accelerating the new crackdown on anyone who opposes strict communist control.

The most immediate failure, however, has been of the pro-democracy movement's supporters to gain wider support among workers, bureaucrats, military officers and others who could have prevented the Tiananmen Square violence, or halted the new crackdown and propaganda campaign.

The harsh, one-sided propaganda against all who ask for greater freedom has instead reminded many of the strident, terror-filled campaigns which convulsed China during the bloody 1966 to 1976 Cultural Revolution.

During those years, when the nation was led by Chairman Mao Zedong, his fanatic Red Guards purged China of all people who did not adhere to Mao's vision of a highly politicized, communist collective.

Today, however, the struggle is different.

Though Mao's Red Guards were students, their orders were to root out opponents and crush individual freedom.

The new pro-democracy movement is also led by students but is instead trying to bring a multi-party system, along with press freedom and an end to corruption.

Deng, who many in Washington earlier praised for his willingness to open China to international investment, appears to have been solely profit-minded.

One Beijing-based Western analyst said in an interview, "Now, with hindsight, if you look carefully at all of Deng's statements over the years, you'll see that though he was for economic liberalization, he always opposed greater freedom.

"When there was the previous student campaign and the earlier Democracy Wall movement, with posters going up demanding basic human rights, Deng cracked down," he said.

"When people asked about China's dissident leaders, who were in prison, Deng refused to release them," the analyst added.

Though the strident propaganda campaign and mass arrests are expected to continue, the televised scenes of jailed supporters may backfire -- at least among some of the people the government is trying to suppress.

Many pro-democracy demonstrators were initially naive about the way the government would deal with their occupation of Tiananmen Square.

After they realized the army was shooting to kill, their illusions of non-violent protest vanished.

Those now in hiding, who see on TV the punishment being meted out to anyone who is caught, may adopt a more violent stance as soon as they have an opportunity to rise up again, Western analysts warned.

Deng, Premier Li Peng and other top leaders, however, apparently feel that the televised crackdown will deter future rebellion.

Copyright by Richard S. Ehrlich

email: animists *at* yahoo dot com

Website, more Asia news by Richard S. Ehrlich plus the non-fiction book of interviews, documentation and investigative journalism, titled: "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews

at: http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent