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The end of the demonstration at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, on June 1, 1989. (Photo by Eric Bouvet/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Last Saturday, Hudson Adjunct Fellow Claudia Rosett passed away at the age of 67. Ms. Rosett was a gifted writer and determined reporter. From her coverage of North Korean slave labor camps within Russia, to her exposé of the United Nations oil-for-food scandal, she reported with moral clarity on foreign affairs and human rights issues for over four decades. She leaves behind her husband Timothy G. Wilson.
After witnessing the Tiananmen Square massacre 34 years ago, she wrote, “With this slaughter, China’s communist government has uncloaked itself before the world.” Read her firsthand account from 1989 in the Wall Street Journal.
Key Insights
1. Students came from all over the country to join the mass protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
For a few brave weeks, they occupied the square’s Monument to China’s Revolutionary Heroes, broadcasting their call for democracy. This weekend the party ended its secret deliberations over how to handle this affront to its imperial powers. Tanks and troops then occupied the square, leaving no doubt who owned this site once dedicated by Mao Tse-tung to the building of a People’s Republic.
2. For years the people had felt betrayed by a government that, on the basis of nothing but its guns, claimed to rule in their name.
If China’s democratic uprising achieved nothing else, it at least flushed into view the naked shape of China’s Communist Party. The students, joined at the height of the protests by millions of others across China, demanded democracy and its attendant rights to speak freely and be governed not by the party line, but by an independent rule of law. The party first responded with such Orwellian slogans as “Resolutely support the fight against bourgeois liberalization”; then it got down to straightforward murder.
3. It will be important then to remember the heroes of 1989.
When the Chinese government finished dealing with its people, the tidy square was presented again as a suitable site for tourists, visiting dignitaries, and the Chinese public to come honor the heroes of China’s glorious revolution. It will be important to remember the heroes of 1989, the people who cried out so many times, “Tell the world what we want. Tell the truth about China.”
Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.
Go Deeper
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Hudson Mourns the Passing of Adjunct Fellow Claudia Rosett Hudson Senior Fellows Jack David and Melanie Kirkpatrick, friends and colleagues of Ms. Rosett, write that “her breadth of knowledge was such that she could work quotes from free-market economist Milton Friedman, Romantic poet John Keats, and children’s novelist Laura Ingalls Wilder into a single conversation.” |
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Claudia Rosett’s Wonderful Life When the Wall Street Journal assigned Ms. Rosett, still a freelancer, to review a Dr. Seuss book drawing a moral equivalence between the United States and the Soviet Union, she wrote her response using the famed author’s own rhyme scheme, concluding that he had come down with a brain full of “oobleck.” The Journal then offered her a full-time position, recounts the New York Sun. |
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Claudia Rosett, Who Reported from Tiananmen Square, Dies at Sixty-Seven “During Tiananmen, she was absolutely fearless,” said Associated Press and Washington Post reporter John Pomfret. Read the Washington Post's full tribute to Ms. Rosett's storied life and career. |
