Paint-Throwing Born of Frustration
“A former Chinese teacher who famously splattered paint on Chairman Mao’s portrait at the height of the Beijing protests 20 years ago describes a failure of leadership among protesters—and how years of prison abuse scarred the friend who joined him in that act of vandalism.” From Radio Free Asia:
China has developed tremendously over the last two decades, but “in terms of political and democratic reforms” the system is unchanged, one of three men jailed for splattering paint on Chairman Mao Zedong’s portrait during the 1989 Tiananmen protests has said.
Yu Zhijian, who along with fellow paint-thrower Yu Dongyue was just granted U.S. asylum, described their high-profile May 23, 1989 act of vandalism as a product of frustration directed at the Chinese authorities and prompted by the failure of protest leaders to devise a response when Beijing declared martial law.
“Before we resorted to the violent behavior, we tried to communicate to the student leaders our assessment of the situation,” Yu Zhijian said in his first interview since arriving in the United States in mid-May.
