Boston Globe - Editorial

11/04/97

By Allan Berger

Nobody, not even the president of the world's most populous country, can be in two different places at the same time. Nevertheless, it would have been a good thing for him and for China if Jiang Zemin, who heard the amplified sounds of dissent, had been able to stroll among the diverse demonstrators outside Sanders Theater Saturday morning at Harvard.

The scene was pure Americana, even if most of those peacefully expressing their opinions were Chinese or Tibetan. When Jiang's motorcade came rolling through Harvard Square, banner-waving supporters of Jiang stood cheek-by-jowl with opponents of the People's Republic of China along both sides of Massachusetts Avenue.

Jiang's supporters waved red flags emblazoned with the yellow hammer and sickle of the PRC, and they shouted slogans about the unity of China. Tibetans, citizens of Taiwan, mainlanders opposed to the communist regime, members of Amnesty International, and Physicians for Human Rights - all were assembled to give voice to their protest against Beijing's policies.

There were, to be sure, occasional episodes of anger or intemperate ardor. A Tibetan woman behind a police barrier across the street from Sanders Theater shouted for the freedom of a compatriot. Young Chinese students with red flags told her to stop shouting. This, she said, is a free country. ''If it's a free country,'' one of the students retorted, ''then you don't have to shout in my ear. You can reason with me.''

Again the woman shouted for the release of her imprisoned compatriot. ''Why do you keep shouting?'' the Chinese student asked. ''I shout because they may kill her,'' the Tibetan woman answered.

Their dialogue enacted an age-old difference between the occupier and the occupied, between the oppressed and the oppressor. It also depicted the distinction between a place where political positions may be expressed freely in public and one where the blood of a dissenter or a resister is spattered on the walls.

There was a festival of freedom outside Sanders Theater in Cambridge Saturday morning. Too bad Jiang wasn't there to see it.