Chaos Butterfly

TANK MAN

It has been 18 years since the Tienanmen Square protests. They started on April 15, 1989 (Tax day in America, oddly enough) and came to a brutal end when, in the early hours of June 4th, when 300,000 troops using tanks and semi automatic weapons crushed the protest. The deaths from that confrontation, depending on the source, range from 1,000 to 7,000 people.

The very next day a lone man walked in front of a column of tanks which were moving east on Beijing's Chang'an Boulevard (Avenue of Eternal Peace) near Tienanmen Square. Carrying a briefcase in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other, he walked in front of the tanks and stood his ground. And they stopped. Every time they tried to go around him, he would move in front of them again. At one point he scampered on top of the lead tank and talked to the men inside. When he came back down, he tried to block them again, but some people from the surrounding crowd came forward and pulled him away.

The "Tank Man" is one of my heroes.

I always imagine him walking home from work, having stopped at the store to pick up something to cook for dinner, when he happened upon this horrendous scene. Then with nothing more then sheer force of will, he stopped the madness.

I know that my mental image of what happened is very "Mary Poppins" and I know he didn't just come upon this scene, announce "Well that is enough of that" and then walk into the middle of the street and create an iconic moment. But that is how my mind's eye sees it when I give it any thought.

A lot of debate surrounds the fate of the "Tank Man". Some say he was executed within days of his historic protest. The Chinese government will not say who he is, or what happened to him, but they categorically deny his being executed. There are some accounts that he was never identified and has evaded capture all of these years.

The driver of the tank was not so lucky.

He is another one of my heroes.

I am too tired to find the source material to properly site his fate, but many years ago I read that he had been arrested, tortured and imprisoned for disobeying direct orders to run down the "Tank Man".

He was, after all, much easier to find, and in many ways a "captive" audience.

Today's world is filled with misery and hatred boiling over into violence. Acts of terrorism happen multiple times per day. To me, terrorism is the ultimate acknowledgment of impotence. Its a fruitless venture that results in the death of innocent people and no appreciable effect upon governing bodies. Pacifist movements, on the other hand, lack the flash (sorry) but have actually resulted in meaningful regime change.

There are a number of instances where non-violent protests have significantly changed the world. Gandhi freed India from the yoke of British rule with non-violent protest. The Solidarity Union in Poland, under the leadership of Lech Walesa, helped bring about the end of the Soviet Union. And in the Philippines, Corazon Aquino's supporters brought down the Marcos regime with nothing more violent then banging pots together after a rigged election denied her the presidency.

But I digress.

This post was supposed to be about the "Tank Man".

Why I love the "Tank Man" in a hundred words or less:

• He saw something unconscionable and acted to stop it.

• His protest was non-violent.

• He lived in a country where any kind of protesting was illegal and was likely to result in severe punishment. He did it anyway.

• He had to have known walking in front of the tanks would likely result in his immediate death by being run over, but he did it anyway. What a rush it must have been when he realized they actually stopped.

• As public an act as it was, it was a private moment between him and his conscience. He has faded into the mists of time without later polluting the act through self-promotion a'la Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson.

• His silent act of defiance was heard around the world.

Why I love the tank's driver:

• He stopped.

• He kept stopping

• People had to have been screaming at him, over the radio, in the tank itself, and yet... He stopped.

• He knew what would happen to him... Still, He stopped.

• The "Tank Man" always struck me as a beautiful act of whimsy. Very "Damn the torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead." Very "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" The Tank Driver's was a very clear act of defiance that would just as easily result in his execution for mutiny, and yet he made a clear moral choice. His statement was a very quiet yet deliberate "FUCK YOU" to the man... His statement was "I love my country but I will not commit murder for it." When the Powers That Be said "run that Son of a Bitch over" he said "NO!"

Also I love the poetry of this historic and iconic moment happening on "The Avenue of Eternal Peace."