Top Communist Official Jailed by Tiananmen Said, “It is quite normal that in China they persecute you for your ideas, at least I am still alive.”

Wear low close surveillance since 1989 And he’s used to being embarrassed, so when reporters are barred from entering his home, he has no problem going out and sitting down to chat at a nearby fast food restaurant.

Bao Tong (Haining, 1932), the most senior official imprisoned in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen protests for his support for a negotiated solution, comments that in the streets, it is easier for the authorities to follow what he says to the international press. His mental acuity more than compensates for his partial blindness, despite which he strives to demonstrate the physical autonomy he enjoys at 88 years old. When you want to emphasize a statement, you touch the tip of your nose with your right index finger.

In 1989, Bao Tong was the first secretary to the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the ill-fated Zhao Ziyang, deposed for his predisposition to dialogue with protesters and who lived under house arrest until his death in 2005. .. Bao Tong was then also a member of the CPC Central Committee and director of the Bureau for Research and Political System Reform.

Bao Tong is an exception to Chinese leaders’ silence. Bao Tong is perhaps the country’s greatest dissident.

“They watch me 24 hours a day,” he says. “Not only the people, but also the cars, because they are afraid that I will take a taxi.” Then he clarifies that just because an old man who speaks slowly has failed the almighty Chinese government: “They are not afraid of me or of what I say, but that others know it.”

Mr. Bao was purged in 1957 during the anti-right campaign, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and, finally, a few days before the start of the massacre of June 4, 1989, whose number of protesters killed by the army remains unknown 32 years later. He was arrested on May 28 of the same year and sentenced in 1992 to 7 years in prison, accused of “revealing state secrets” and “counter-revolutionary propaganda”.. They released him in 1996, but he spent two more years in military housing.

China today, he says, is a far cry from that of 1989, when hundreds of thousands of people, not just college students – and days, millions – took to the streets of the capital and d other Chinese cities to demand an end to corruption and openness. Bao believes the June 4 derailment of China’s political reform was a turning point in the Asian country: “Since then, people are afraid to fight. At that time, there were many voicing their opinions, and it was even clear that within the government itself and the CCP there were also different views, among which – and to Bao’s regret and much of others – the most reactionary ended up prevailing.

However, despite the perception of monolithic leadership in China today, Bao maintains that there are still “different voices both in the country and in the Party”, only that “in some countries, it is forbidden to express it ”.

When asked about the changes needed for China today, Tiananmen’s biggest political victim is clear: “First, freedom of the press. This is what we need the most. There are a lot of changes needed but for this it is essential that there is freedom of the press”. From there, Bao believes, “we should get rid of ‘Chinese characteristics’,” a recurring dialectical turn used by Beijing to justify adapting foreign systems to its own needs.

Do you think the government will authorize these changes? “At the moment, I don’t see it, but maybe because I have bad eyesight …”. His wish is that “everyone will say what they know about June 4, but people are talking less and less and many leaders have died.” And in schools, in the press, on social networks, this sad historical episode is heavily censored. Bao Tong argues that when Chinese schools can educate on Tiananmen, children will learn “freedom”. A greater freedom which he has never been able to enjoy, and which has been deposited in many different ways throughout his life. With so many years of misery and behind bars, watched and criticized just for thinking as you think, do you regret anything? “It is quite normal for China to persecute you for your ideas. I can’t say I regret it. And there are many people who have suffered more than me – he emphasizes -. Many have died, and I’m still alive “. Javier Triana

With information from the EFE

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