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Former Chinese Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang’s death in mid-January was a non-event. Never mind Zhao had been No. 2 in China for almost a decade, acolyte of the sainted Supreme Leader Deng Xiaoping. Never mind Zhao had initiated the economic liberalization in his [and Deng’s] native Sichuan, a model for the country. Never mind Zhao had been under house arrest for 15 years, given minimal conditions during his terminal illness. Chinese leadership was terrified Zhao’s death might set off new organized resistance — just as the passing of another reformer, Hu Yaobang, had led to events which ostracized Zhao.
Zhao’s cardinal sin: he had proposed political liberalization to accompany creation of a market economy. Perhaps Zhao’s finest moment came at dawn on May 19, 1989, when as Party leader he suddenly appeared among protesting students in the pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. He sadly told them [with the present Prime Minister Wen Jiabao at his side, something everyone now wants desperately to forget] he had been overruled. He pleaded with them to leave. Two weeks later, in their hundreds, perhaps in their thousands [we may never know], tanks slaughtered them. Zhao was removed from office never appearing in public again.
“The authorities” refused all pleas by family, former associates, intellectuals, to apologize for Tienanmien, or to “rehabilitate” Zhao. In fact, calls for such action have landed others in prison. But his ghost will continue to haunt China. Leading up to his death, Beijing went on security alert, fearing sparks from sympathizers might set off new organized reistance. Growing peasant and worker disputes, attacks on local authorities, disparities of wealth and privilege [now “institutionalized” in ex-President Jiang Zemin’s Three Reconstructs], dog the new China which followed Zhao’s economic recipe.
But when new crises arise – as they inevitably will – will there be a consensus to save a regime which is in an orgy presently of suppression of even friendly dissidence?
On February 27, the Sabarmati Express at Godhra, returning with a load of Hindu activists who had made a pilgrimage to the site of a destroyed mosque in North India, said to be the birthplace of the diety Rama, caught fire. Some 60 people died a horrific death.
Quickly, rumors spread throughout Gujarat. Moslem terrorists, it was said, perhaps led by Pakistani agents, had committed arson. Large scale riots broke out in which thousands of Moslems lost their lives. Opportunists grabbed valuable real estate in the country’s most prosperous state. If there were no police complicity, there was little effort to halt the violence.
Almost routinely when law and order breaks down in an Indian state, the federal government suspends local government and establishes “president’s rule” under the federally normally powerless appointed governor who is given emergency powers. But neither the state government, in the hands of a chief minister notorious for his anti-Moslem prejudice, nor the federal government moved. Headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP], both were shortly facing national and state elections. Both had been elected in campaigns based on “Hindutva” [Hindu-ness]. In its moderate form, the concept was simply a celebration of the obvious fact while India is a secular state, it has an overwhelming Hindu majority which lays down the moral basis for society. But BJP’s origins are among organizations [one, the RSS, is paramilitary and wore uniforms to work in Gujerat government offices] which go much further, demanding India’s polity conform to fundamentalist doctrines. The political conflict is not unknown in other democracies.
Despite his reputation for tolerance and as a vote getter, the then Indian Prime Minister Atalal Vajpayee refused to oust his fellow party member, the BJP Gujarat chief minister, nor invoke president’s rule. Instead, a commission of inquiry whitewashed the affair – replete with intimidation of victims and witnesses. Vajpayee has since expressed his regret for his lack of action.
And well he might. When Indians went to the polls last fall, Vajpayee’s BJP suffered a stunning upset. It was replaced by Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party with its reputation for a more secular approach to myriad problems of India’s multitude of minorities, not excluding the vast array of conflicting Hindu sects.
Now, an expert committee, nearly three years after the incident, chaired by an Indian supreme court justice, has issued a two-volume report saying the Moslem conspiracy thesis was nonsense. Justice U.C. Banerjee refused to reply to questions either on railway safety or the timing of the interim report on the eve of elections in Bihar, Haryana and Jharkhand.
But clearly it is now up to India’s courts – unfortunately with backlogs almost defying description – to move to correct the injustices.
Is there a moral? Yes. All regimes – even those based on principles of law and representative government such as India’s –sometimes make grievous errors. But in a democracy there is a chance for an accounting and remedy. In one-party dictatorships like China’s, the mistakes go on multiplying until eventually they lead to an ultimate crisis. Time will tell.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net),
is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent
for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.