Sirens blaring, protests flaring: Chinese leaders' funerals
World
funerals of Chinese leaders have at times sparked rumblings of dissent.
PARIS (AFP) - Black armbands, white chrysanthemums, sirens blaring on land and sea: the funerals of Chinese leaders are usually grand affairs steeped in Communist Party pomp and mass mourning.
But at times they have sparked rumblings of dissent.
As China says farewell to former president Jiang Zemin on Tuesday, AFP looks at what kind of sendoffs other leaders received:
- Zhou Enlai, 1976 -
Zhou Enlai, the first prime minister of the People’s Republic of China, was widely revered for putting a progressive face on the Communist Party and tempering some of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution.
After his death in January 1976 at the age of 77, huge crowds made their way to Tiananmen Square in Beijing to leave flowers, poems and other tributes at the foot of the Monument to the People’s Heroes.
The mourning gave way to unrest when the authorities removed the huge mound of tributes on China’s Ancestors’ Day in April, sparking riots that were brutally quashed.
- Mao Zedong, 1976 -
The announcement of Mao’s death on September 9, 1976 at the age of 82 sparked scenes of mass hysteria in the country where the founder of the People’s Republic was revered as a demi-god.
His body lay in state in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing for a week, during which around a million people filed past his open casket.
On September 18, hundreds of millions of Chinese stood where they were in silent tribute at the start of his public funeral, while sirens sounded throughout the country for three minutes.
Hundreds of thousands of people wearing black armbands and white paper chrysanthemums pinned to their chests attended the huge ceremony in Beijing.
Mao’s embalmed body was later put on permanent display inside a cavernous memorial hall on Tiananmen Square, where it remains to this day.
- Hu Yaobang, 1989 -
A close ally of reform-minded leader Deng Xiaoping, with whom he was twice purged, Communist Party general secretary Hu Yaobang was deposed in 1987 for failing to crack down on pro-democracy student protests.
He is perhaps best remembered for the demonstrations that erupted after his death in April 1989.
Seven weeks of student-led protests, petitions, class boycotts and hunger strikes came to a bloody end on June 4, when tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square in a crackdown that left hundreds of people dead.
- Deng Xiaoping, 1997 -
The funeral of Deng Xiaoping, who died in 1997 at the age of 92, was also a muted affair.
No foreign dignitaries were invited to the ceremony which took place under heavy security, with gatherings in Tiananmen Square banned in the wake of fears within the party of a repeat of the scenes of 1989.
Deng’s childhood village of Paifang was one of the few places where people were allowed to freely express their sorrow over the death of the country’s longtime leader, who oversaw China’s transformation into an economic superpower.
