"The struggle of man against power
is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
- Milan Kundera
It is often that despite the plethora of possible
social roles, there is still but one truly noble profession - motherhood.
For indeed, the act of conceiving is already a sublime undertaking ; a
mystery by itself. By giving birth to a child, one does not only bring
forth life to a world, but also sustains the continuity of human history
and the subsequent re-unfolding of our collective social drama. Hence,
every mother's personal narrative is but a living repository of extreme
joy and deeper sorrow, of profound hope and grim tribulation.
From this, we could say that a mother, and a mother
alone, can fully fathom the pain and suffering of losing a son, a
daughter, or a husband. By seeing her children plucked out from her life
in the dead of the night like helpless leaves from a tree, she not
only bear witness to the violence in society but also the pervading sense
of injustice and complacency of the elite and the powers-that-be.
For this reason, we salute Ding Zilin and all the
mothers of Tiananmen. Armed with nothing but the memory of their lost kin,
their courage has become unequalled, their bravery unparalleled, and their
fortitude truly without comparison. By their untiring campaign for truth
and justice, they have embodied those too meek to speak, those too
unwilling to take action, and too fearful and afraid.
Mao Zedong, at the height of the Cultural Revolution,
in a supreme paean to a mothers everywhere, remarked: "Women hold half the
sky." It is perhaps truly ironic that the very government that constantly
harps on Mao's thought and virtues would one day send the tanks of the PLA
in the early hours of dusk to crush a democratic opposition and stifle
legitimate dissent, subsequently refusing the full disclosure of the
victims' ultimate fate to their mothers and kin.
Yet, no matter what lies the government may conjure or
the restrictions that the authorities may impose, the actions of the
Tiananmen Mothers are victory enough; for they have once proven, that in
the struggle for human rights, women are truly not the weaker sex.
(Message of solidarity, amity and support for Ding
Zilin and the Tiananmen Mothers; from Asian and Latin American Lawyers,
gathered for the Lawyer's Meeting on Involuntary Disappearances; sponsored
by the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD);
November 27-December 2, 2000; Jakarta, Indonesia)
