Chaplain remembers Tiananmen Square on anniversary

ICC Note: Born and raised in China, Capt. Xiong will never forget standing in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, watching the tanks alter his future forever.

By C. Todd Lopez

6/4/10 China (Army News Service) — It was 21 years ago, June 4, 1989, that Americans watched footage on television of a line of tanks in China’s Tiananmen Square stop just short of running over a student protester who was bold enough to stand in their path.
That day, known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, was the last of a nearly two-month long series of protests by Chinese students and citizens, who were unhappy with the communist Chinese government’s policies. They wanted freedom.
Chaplain Yan Xiong, now a captain in the U.S. Army, and stationed at the Warrant Officer Career College at Fort Rucker, Ala., was there in the square. In fact, he was one of the students that kicked off the protests.
“I was the first man to stand out and make a speech,” Xiong said. That was April 19, 1989. “Then I was studying at Beijing University law school. We organized a self-government of students. Independent of the communists. That is the first independent student organization. So then we have a demonstration. Every day we would go to Tiananmen Square.”
Xiong said that at the time, he was young and idealistic. He wanted to make a difference. And his youth propelled him forward — because he said he was too young yet to have fear.
“At 23, as young men, we just wanted to do something,” he said. “We had no fear. We didn’t think about the results, or what would happen. We didn’t think of that. We just needed freedom, freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of religion. We just had the courage to do what we wanted to do.”
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