Posted on 04/09/2006 6:30:15 PM PDT by blam
Livingstone compares poll tax riots to China massacre By Richard Spencer in Beijing
(Filed: 10/04/2006)
Ken Livingstone began a tour of China yesterday by comparing the Tiananmen Square massacre to London's 1990 poll tax riot.
Ken Livingstone said he was considering a countdown clock like Beijing's but was uncertain where to put it
Looking out over the Beijing square from the steps of the National Museum of Revolutionary History, the Mayor of London said the 1989 massacre, in which -hundreds of protesters died, was part of the city's "interesting history", like London's.
"In the same way that Trafalgar Square has had an interesting history, not always a peaceful one, there's a very clear parallel," he said.
"We've had some interesting riots in Trafalgar Square - I mean, only 20 years ago, the poll tax riots, and flames licking up." Mr Livingstone is spending a week in Beijing and Shanghai discussing Olympic planning and promoting London businesses in the world's fastest growing major economy.
He began his first trip to Beijing by posing for photographs under the large red and white clock the authorities have installed on the museum steps counting down the minutes till the 2008 Beijing Games open.
Public relations officials had to be dissuaded from a plan to have him unfurl a publicity banner in front of the square, a stunt that would have risked immediate arrest.
However, they were unable to prevent a stock "human rights" question of the sort put to many visiting politicians on business promotion trips to China.
What did he feel about being at the site of the Tiananmen Square massacre? he was asked.
After commenting on the square's size and scale, he went on to make the comparison with Trafalgar Square.
When it was pointed out that the Metropolitan Police had not shot or killed anyone during the poll tax riot in London in March 1990, he suggested the comparison should be put into a longer context.
"If you go back to some of the early instances you will find many cases where innocent protesters were hacked to pieces with sabres - the Peterloo massacre, for example. There is no such thing as one country with a perfect record." In the Peterloo Massacre, the local militia waded into a crowd of radicals campaigning for universal suffrage on St Peter's Field, Manchester, in 1819, killing 11 and injuring 400.
On Tiananmen Square, estimates of the numbers of those killed by troops and tanks range up to 3,000, the figure given out by the Chinese Red Cross immediately afterwards.
Mr Livingstone's views on the "June 4 incident", as it is called in China, are unlikely to be reported by the local media. Nor will they be of much interest to the Beijing city authorities, who are hosting him, though he went on to say that he would express his personal feelings to them in private. Other politicians have been in trouble for their comments on the massacre.
President Jacques Chirac of France said in 2004 it was "another time" when he sought to justify his support for the lifting of the EU arms embargo on China, imposed immediately after the killings.
As he continued his press conference on the steps, Mr Livingstone went on to denounce the "conservatism" of Westminster council and other authorities in London.
He said he had been considering a countdown clock like Beijing's but was uncertain where to put it. He said Westminster council might object to Trafalgar Square.
"All the places which have a suitable site are in places which have councils which are very opposed to progress in London," he said. "I have been trying to put up a statue of Nelson Mandela but they have been very resistant to it, so I don't think they would go for a clock."
Mr Livingstone has been under fire for a series of comments, including comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard, accusing the American ambassador of behaving like a "chiselling little crook", and suggesting that two Jewish businessmen "go back to Iran" and live under the ayatollahs.
His trip to China is being co-ordinated by three public relations firms as well as the British embassy.
He is being accompanied by Lord Coe, the chairman of the London Olympic Games Organising Committee, representatives of "Think London" and "Visit London", his own advisers on international affairs, economic and business policy and cultural affairs, the chief executive of Chelsea Football Club and other businessmen.
Where Beijing may be interested in hearing his views is on the subject of environmental pollution, one of its key worries in the run-up to the Games.
A thick, grey smog hung over a large part of the city yesterday, as it does most days, predominantly made up of exhaust fumes from the fast-growing number of cars on the streets.
"We have good experience in London with the congestion charge, which has cut traffic coming into London," Mr Livingstone said.
Oh, no, Livingstone. You aren't getting off that easily. You are comparing an event with hundreds of deaths at the hands of a government to an event with ZERO deaths at the hands of a government. There is no comparison. If he wants to compare Tiananmen to other events, let him compare them to other events. But this "longer context" takes everything completely out of context.
Leftist logic at work. They'll draw parallels between anything.
Much worse. She is a powerless windbag who has trouble even getting listened to by her own party. He is the mayor of one of the world's most important cities.
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