Although there is no way I can accept your monitoring, arrests, indictments, and verdicts, I respect your professions and your integrity, including those of the two prosecutors, Zhang Rongge and Pan Xueqing, who are now bringing charges against me on behalf of the prosecution. None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies. But I still want to say to this regime, which is depriving me of my freedom, that I stand by the convictions I expressed in my “June Second Hunger Strike Declaration” twenty years ago-I have no enemies and no hatred. And now I have been once again shoved into the dock by the enemy mentality of the regime. Because of this, I was subjected to year-round monitoring, kept under residential surveillance (May 1995 to January 1996) and sent to Reeducation-Through-Labor (October 1996 to October 1999). Upon release from Qincheng Prison in 1991, I, who had been led onto the path of political dissent by the psychological chains of June Fourth, lost the right to speak publicly in my own country and could only speak through the foreign media. Twenty years have passed, but the ghosts of June Fourth have not yet been laid to rest. Although the crimes I have been charged with on the two occasions are different in name, their real substance is basically the same-both are speech crimes. When I think about it, my most dramatic experiences after June Fourth have been, surprisingly, associated with courts: My two opportunities to address the public have both been provided by trial sessions at the Beijing Municipal Intermediate People’s Court, once in January 1991, and again today. This is a tragedy, both for me personally and for a China that has already seen thirty years of Reform and Opening Up. Merely for publishing different political views and taking part in a peaceful democracy movement, a teacher lost his lectern, a writer lost his right to publish, and a public intellectual lost the opportunity to give talks publicly. to take part in the 1989 Movement, I was thrown into prison for “the crime of counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement.” I also lost my beloved lectern and could no longer publish essays or give talks in China. After that, because I had returned from the U.S. What I demanded of myself was this: whether as a person or as a writer, I would lead a life of honesty, responsibility, and dignity. At the same time, I was a public intellectual, writing articles and books that created quite a stir during the 1980s, frequently receiving invitations to give talks around the country, and going abroad as a visiting scholar upon invitation from Europe and America. As a teacher, I was well received by the students. Upon receiving my degrees, I stayed on to teach at Beijing Normal University. From BA to MA and on to PhD, my academic career was all smooth sailing. Up to that point, I was a member of the first class to enter university when college entrance examinations were reinstated following the Cultural Revolution (Class of ’77). In the course of my life, for more than half a century, June 1989 was the major turning point. Latourelle, and is reprinted here with permission. The following statement was originally published by the Hong Kong-based NGO Human Rights in China, based on a translation by J.
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