Thousands of Chinese mourners paid their last respects to purged Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang on Saturday in a tightly controlled memorial ceremony that underlined the government’s unease about the most prominent political victim of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
As a result of a dispute between the family and the authorities, no eulogy was read out during the three-hour event at Beijing’s Babaoshan cemetery for revolutionary heroes. But after his cremation later in the day, the state-run Xinhua news agency released the official obituary, saying Zhao made ‘serious mistakes’ in his handling of the political crisis in 1989.
Zhao, who died aged 85 in a Beijing hospital on 17 January, had spent 15 years under house arrest. He was purged from the leadership after a failed attempt to halt the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen demonstrators.
His last public appearance was a tearful plea to the students to give up their hunger strike. ”I have come too late,” he said. Soon after, martial law was declared, People’s Liberation Army tanks rolled into the square and hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters were slaughtered.
In death as in life, Zhao was treated as a threat to the authority of the Communist Party. The domestic media — completely state-controlled — gave no advance notice of the memorial service, although he was one of the most important Chinese political figures of the last century.
The family requested an open service to allow the public to mourn their lost leader but access to the ceremony was heavily restricted.
According to human rights groups, among those excluded were Jiang Yanyong, the doctor who exposed the government’s cover-up over Sars, and Wang Lingyun, the mother of Wang Dan, one of the leaders of the student protesters.
But 2 000 people were reportedly allowed into the ceremony. The government was represented by Jia Qinglin, a member of the party’s standing committee. Zhao’s body was placed on a bier, dressed in a blue, high-collared Chinese jacket and covered with the Communist Party flag. Mourners filed past, bowing three times and shaking hands with Zhao’s five children. Many, including some of the police, were in tears.
The official assessment of the former Prime Minister and party general secretary was tougher. Xinhua credited ”Comrade Zhao” for his influential role in the launching of economic reforms, but condemned him for his response to the Tiananmen protests.
”In the early years of China’s reform and opening-up drive, he successively held important leading positions of the CPC central committee and the state, making contribution to the cause of the party and the people,” said the official obituary. ”In the political turbulence which took place in 1989, Comrade Zhao committed serious mistakes.”
The family have had to take the ashes back to the house where Zhao was imprisoned for 15 years, because the government refused to let his remains be placed in the Babaoshan Number One room for national leaders.
The past two weeks have shown that detentions and news blackouts are frighteningly effective in ensuring that a public — now more focused on economic growth than politics — paid little heed to the demise of the man once deemed to have been the best hope for political reform.
Foreign governments and business people, who are increasingly dependent on Chinese trade, have been complicit. Europe is about to lift the arms embargo on China imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
Bill Gates complimented Beijing on Saturday on its creation of a ”new form of capitalism”. Earlier this month British Foreign Office officials refused to allow this reporter to ask a question at a Beijing press conference for Jack Straw because the topic — Zhao Ziyang — would offend the hosts. – Guardian Unlimited Â