Han Dongfang: from Tiananmen Hero to Modest Workers' Champion

48 autumn-winter 2014/HesaMag #10 Books 1/2 Han Dongfang: from Tiananmen hero to modest workers’ champion Don’t, whatever you do, call him a dissident. commenting on working conditions in China But there is still a long and challenging Hero of Tiananmen Square he may be, but he from his cramped studio. But he got bored road ahead. Industrial development has put won’t be labelled that way – too intellectual, with it not being connected to workface real- the environment and workers’ health at risk. too highbrow. Han Dongfang always remem- ities. "I was just an editorializing journalist, "Most of the cases we have taken up in the bers that before the spring 1989 protests he never getting out of the office and doing noth- past two years concern work-related accidents was a railway worker. And who with a name ing but commenting," he now says. and diseases," he says. Silicosis is wreaking like Dongfang – meaning "the East" in refer- So he persuaded Radio Free Asia to set havoc, affecting more than six million work- ence to The East is Red, China’s anthem dur- up a direct chat line with workers in all re- ers – miners, naturally, but also workers in ing the Cultural Revolution – could set them- gions of China. "These weekly talks helped the building trades, cement works, jewellery selves up as a counter-revolutionary? me understand how Chinese workers live manufacture, etc. To help them claim com- No, Han Dongfang was never a self-ap- and what they go through every day. They let pensation, the China Labour Bulletin sends pointed Lech Walesa of the Far East. "I never the China Labour Bulletin build up a coun- lawyers out to even the remotest villages. urged the workers on to political action," he try-wide network of workers". Now, it draws And it is paying off: the law was overhauled in writes in his autobiography published in early a big audience over the Internet in China, but 2012 so that silicosis sufferers no longer have 2014 in France. A hard-headed country-boy, also elsewhere – the show is a big hit with to prove the causal link between their illness he just wants to do his little bit to improve Chinese communities throughout the world. and their job to get compensation. workers’ living and working conditions. An The Internet and social networks, es- After twenty years’ activism, Han Dong- action man, then. Exiled to Hong Kong, he pecially Weibo, the Chinese Twitter, help fang finally seems reconciled to the idea that founded the China Labour Bulletin in 1994 reach a younger generation born in the 1990s. he may never go back home. China to him is with the aim of persuading the poorest work- "They are a generation of migrant workers what he now experiences through the person- ers of the benefits they could reap from or- who won’t let themselves be ground down (…) al stories of those who growth has sidelined, ganizing collectively. It was printed out and They have developed an Internet-based virtu- urging them to get organised and stand up for posted to a list of 5 000 firms, a bit like a mes- al solidarity which can be turned into a huge their right to dignity but without crossing the sage in a bottle cast into the sea. As you might physical protest movement in a flash", he en- red line. Because he has not forgotten Tian- guess, the results were disappointing. thuses from his belief in their ability to make anmen Square: "In China, you take political Han Dongfang knew that he would get things happen. action at the risk of prison or even death." nowhere without practical involvement by Unlike their parents, they never lived the workers themselves. But what could he through the "iron rice bowl" period where —Denis Grégoire do, trapped in Hong Kong? It was then he industry workers had job security, a pension remembered his unsuccessful application to guarantee, medical care, free schooling for Radio Beijing at his mother’s prompting, who their children, and company-provided hous- thought he had "a lovely voice". So he con- ing. Privatization in the 1990s "turned local tacted the US Congress-backed Radio Free officials into the bosses of private compa- Mon combat pour Asia which had recently set up in Hong Kong, nies". The bond of trust was broken; the Chi- les ouvriers chinois which offered him several hours’ weekly air nese regime’s Marxist veneer was irreversibly Han Dongfang, Michel time. He started out feeling his way along, shattered. Lafon, 2014, 241 p..

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