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For One Soldier At Tiananmen, A Day 'Never Forgotten'

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Hour after hour passed as Chen Guang stood, gun trembling in his hands, behind the doors of Beijing's Great Hall of the people, waiting for the order to clear Tiananmen Square of its student protesters. It was 1989, and Chen was a 17-year-old soldier from a small town whose life was changed by his role in the bloody crackdown. His account offers a sharply different perspective of the events of June 3 and 4, 1989, when martial law troops fought their way into the center of Beijing, killing hundreds of people, mainly on approach roads into the square. "They said, 'Clear the square!' but we didn't know how to clear it," Chen Guang told me when we met last year. "There were so many people there. How do you make them leave? We were just waiting for orders. Whatever the highers-up said, we'd do." That blind obedience was something he would start to question only much later on. At the time, it never occurred to Chen — having been subject to weeks of political indoctrination — that not obeying

June 4: The Day That Defines, And Still Haunts China

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As China prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its brutal repression of protests around Tiananmen Square, its leaders have presided over an unprecedented pre-anniversary crackdown. Rights groups say at least 50 people have been detained, put under house arrest or disappeared . Silence surrounds this anniversary. So, too, does repression: For the first time, activists trying to hold private commemorations have been detained. Police are even warning foreign journalists not to go to Tiananmen Square. Why do the events of June 4 remain so potent? Why is June 4 such a taboo? When I saw him last year, I asked the celebrated artist Ai Weiwei. "Why the [Chinese Communist Party] cannot talk about it? Because that's the time they lost their legitimacy," he replied. To claw back its legitimacy, the party had to offer something to the masses. And that thing turned out to be economic prosperity and material gain. The "grand bargain" is tidily summed up by Chen Ziming, a Beijing academic who

In Australia, Decades Of Abuse Against Military Recruits Comes To Light

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Editor's Note: There are descriptions of rape and other forms of sexual abuse in this story. All that remains is a pair of yellow gates, perched on the crest of a hill dotted with gum trees and cypresses, overlooking the blue sea. The natural beauty of the site stands in stark contrast to the central role it played at the heart of a sex abuse scandal dating back decades. The scandal has roiled Australia's Defence Forces and caused one of the most senior figures in the armed forces to apologize in front of a Royal Commission investigating the abuses. The Army Apprentice School, which once stood on this hill, was, along with a naval institution, HMAS Leeuwin, the site of horrific abuse of 15-year-old and 16-year-old recruits in the 1970s, while senior officers turned a blind eye. Daryl James strides through the parking lot, which was once the parade ground of the Army Apprentice School in Balcombe, Victoria, in southeast Australia, pointing out landmarks. He was 15 and an aspiring

Inventor Who Made Chinese Easier To Read, Dies

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Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: The inventor of Pinyin - that's the system of transcribing Chinese characters in the Roman alphabet - has died. Zhou Youguang had just celebrated his 111th birthday. He was also a political dissident, which made him a thorn in the government's side. Six years ago on this program, NPR's Louisa Lim sent us a profile of Zhou after meeting him at his home in Beijing. We decided to share it with you again. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST) UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Speaking Chinese). LOUISA LIM, BYLINE: A class of Chinese kids learns Pinyin, a system for spelling out Chinese words using the Roman alphabet. This is the first step towards literacy in China, one that hundreds of millions of people have taken over the past half century. Pinyin is largely the work of one extraordinary and extraordinarily modest man. As a young man, Zhou Youguang moved to the States and worked as a Wall Street banker but returned to China after the 1949

Australia's Prime Minister Is Ousted By His Own Party

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Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit NOEL KING, HOST: All right, some interesting news out of Australia this morning. For the sixth time in 10 years, Australia has a new prime minister. This comes after a week of partisan feuding. And the man who finds himself in the top job is a complete surprise. Louisa Lim is reporting for NPR News from Melbourne. LOUISA LIM, BYLINE: It's been a head-spinning week in Australian politics and has produced a new prime minister, who until two days ago swore he didn't want the job. Former Treasurer Scott Morrison won the post in a surprise twist during an internal leadership contest in the ruling Liberal Party. ScoMo, as he's known here, is a conservative famed for his tough stance on asylum-seekers. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) PRIME MINISTER SCOTT MORRISON: My plan for this country is for an even stronger Australia, to keep our economy strong, to guarantee the essentials that Australians rely on, to keep Australians safe from terrorism. LIM: His
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