An archive of the 1989 Chinese Pro-Democracy Movement

Abstract

• A collection of photocopies of leaflets relating to the Spring 1989 Pro-Democracy Movement in China has been assembled in Oriental and India Office Collections. Most of the original leaflets were collected in Peking by Robin Munro, who was working for Amnesty International at the time and is now a member of Asia Watch, the New York based human rights monitoring organization. Further leaflets have since been presented by June 4th China Support. This is an ad hoc group of sinologists and others with Chinese connections which was formed in the United Kingdom in response to the massacre in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989. As many people in China tried to send news of the massacre and its after-effects abroad, and many Hong Kong Chinese began gathering evidence in anticipation of an official cover-up, June 4th China Support felt that archival material should be collected and is continuing to channel such material to the British Library. For example, seventy-two photographs and twenty-nine slides of banners and wall posters taken in Peking in May 1989 by free-lance photographers Sally and Richard Greenhills, material published in Hong Kong concerning Tiananmen Square, and a collection of newspaper articles relating to China and Hong Kong from The Financial Times, The Economist, the European edition of The Wall Street Journal and The International Herald Tribune, covering the period from 1 March 1989 to the present, have been generously contributed to the Library by various sources.