A symbol of free speech silenced

By GEOFFREY YORK
Toronto Globe and Mail
Friday, November 23, 2007

It's only a small patch of grass now. A faded red ribbon hangs from a tree branch, and a few scraps of paper are still visible on the trunk of a pine tree.

But for decades this was the spiritual home of free speech at China's most famous university. It was the starting point of student protests, from the Cultural Revolution to the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and the anti-American protests of later years. And now its destruction has sparked an extraordinary debate about freedom and memory in China today.

Students called it "Triangle Land" -- a jumble of billboards on a triangular patch of grass and trees at the heart of the Peking University campus, where students would gather to read the latest posters and poems and political essays.

It was here where the first "big character" posters were displayed in 1966, launching the Cultural Revolution, the years of Maoist fervor when zealous Red Guards rampaged through the schools and universities.

It was here where students gathered in the 1980s to display petitions for democracy and political reform, culminating in the famous Tiananmen Square protests. The message boards became a kind of "Democracy Wall," replacing an earlier celebrated site in Beijing, until Chinese tanks crushed the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989.

And it was here where angry young people gathered to protest the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, one of the seminal events in the Chinese nationalist mood that has surged in the past decade.

Triangle Land began to fall into neglect in recent years, replaced by Web sites and Internet forums, and its bulletin boards were covered by advertisements for exam-cheating services and foreign business schools. The university's administrators decided it was an eyesore, and the bulletin boards were abruptly demolished at the end of last month.

The demolition ignited a fierce debate among students and graduates of the university. It became one of the hottest topics in the Chinese media. Some graduates laid flowers at the site as a memorial. Others posted sharp criticism on the university's electronic bulletin boards -- which were quickly shut down by the authorities to control the protests.

Many lamented the loss of the historic symbol of free speech at China's leading campus. They were angry that the university had failed to consult students before demolishing the boards.

"It means that we are deprived of the freedom to post information without advance approval," one student wrote on an Internet forum. "We've even lost the expectation of freedom, and we even forget that there is a word called 'freedom.' "

While the university suggested that Triangle Land could be replaced by an electronic display board, students noted that an electronic board would be easy for the authorities to control. "It would block the tradition of democracy and freedom," one student said.

Others spoke of the threat to the university's collective memory. "If the demolition continues, this will become a university without memory," said a commentator in China Youth Daily.

As debate raged on, university President Xu Zhihong was forced to defend the demolition, calling it a necessary step to maintain order on the campus. "No university in the world has a place in such a disorder," he told the state news agency Xinhua this month.

University administrators summoned the leaders of the official student society to a private meeting and ordered them to quell the debate over the demolition, according to a report in a Hong Kong newspaper.

But while the older graduates were angered by the demolition, many of the younger students saw nothing to worry about.

"I'm a little nostalgic, but the whole trend of the country is going forward like this," said a 22-year-old female student who refused to be identified.

"There's no time for us to keep looking behind. Freedom of speech? We have the Internet, which is more efficient."

(gyork(at)globeandmail.com.)