OLYMPICS:A victim of the 1989 crackdown on dissidents tells Clifford Coonanhe will not be going to Beijing.
FANG ZHENG hopes the Olympic Games, due to begin with great fanfare on Friday, run smoothly and present China in a great light, even though the discus thrower's own hopes of ever competing in the Olympics ended when a tank crushed his legs on Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989.
This is an Olympic story about politics, not sport. It was not so much the loss of his legs which cost Fang his career as an international athlete, as he competed very successfully in competitions for disabled athletes in the years after his injury. It was the manner in which he became disabled, losing his legs during modern China's most serious political crisis, that ruled Fang out of international competition.
"The Olympics have a great significance for China and to the Chinese people. The games will make China more open," said Fang. His selfless, quietly expressed sentiments only partially mask a deeper anger. To protect himself and his family, he has to be careful in what he says, especially during a week when thousands of athletes, officials and tourists gather in Beijing to celebrate the world's biggest sporting event.
The world will celebrate without Fang, who spoke from his wheelchair at his home in Hefei in Anhui province, one of China's poorest. He lost both legs in the massacre - his right leg was lost above the knee, his left leg amputated just below.
His early life is the classic biography of an emerging Chinese sports star. He was fired up by China's return to the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984 after a long hiatus. "I've been a sports enthusiast since my childhood, and we were all so excited back then that China was going to become part of the Olympic family again," he said.
A patriot, he wanted to help his country win medals. When he started studying in 1985, he trained at night. He was inspired by the spirit of idealism that swept through Beijing, coming to a head in the spring of 1989, which saw thousands of students occupy the city's central square to protest against corruption and call for democratic change.
A few months after the Beijing events in June 1989, in cities like Leipzig, Budapest and Prague, governments decided not to act against their people, and the chain of events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening up of Eastern Europe began. In Beijing, supreme leader Deng Xiaoping, the architect of the same reforms which saw China end its prolonged isolation, Olympian and otherwise, decided to act differently.
The Chinese government sent the tanks in to crush the fledgling democracy movement, in Beijing and in other centres around the country. The same Communist Party that gave that order is in power today. It will officiate over the Olympic Games opening ceremony on Friday, although the personnel have changed and the country is unrecognisable in so many ways.
The official line is that the Tiananmen Square crackdown was necessary to ensure stability; and since 1989, the government has begun to implement some of the freedoms the protesters had sought, such as getting rid of rules dictating where Chinese could live or work, and even whom they could marry. Years of economic growth have given millions of Chinese a say in their destinies and the government is engaged in a highly public campaign to crack down on the corruption which has blighted the country and which it once denied existed.
At the same time, power in China still belongs exclusively to the Communist Party and independent political activity is forbidden. Nearly all of China's active dissidents have been exiled or imprisoned.
The crackdown is no longer a topic of discussion these days and has become increasingly an historical problem. Students entering university this year were not born when the massacre happened, and even this year's graduating class were toddlers when it took place.
When asked about it, many young Chinese shrug their shoulders and say that, while the events of 1989 were terrible, they were a necessary price to pay for ensuring social stability and the foundations of growing wealth in China today.
For his part, Fang tells of a night of terror as the tanks rolled in early on the morning of June 4th and opened fire on the unarmed demonstrators. Along with his fellow students, he ran for his life to the west of the square. As they approached the Liubukou crossroads, grenades were thrown into the crowd from behind, and Fang heard the tracks behind him. He saw the tank approach until he thought its barrel was right in his face. He was helping a female student into a side street when his legs went under the tracks, and he was dragged along behind the vehicle before hauling himself clear.
He started to train again as part of the lengthy healing process following the double amputation, focusing on discus and javelin. In March 1992 he represented Beijing in the third All-China Disabled Athletic Games in Guangzhou, winning two gold medals. He qualified for an international event in 1994 but the sports ministry did not allow him to take part because of fears he would talk to foreign reporters and cause embarrassment.
Since then Fang has been sidelined. The official version is that he lost his legs in a "traffic accident". He is not bitter, but the sports apparatus is controlled by the government and his family is poor. "I do not plan to come to Beijing for the Olympics or Paralympics. As to what happened to me, it was many years ago. I am certainly very angry about it," he said, "These days I live a very ordinary life. I am just an ordinary civilian."