Gun-shy or something else?

By Dr John Cameron
Special to Intelligentsiya

This is the photograph (right) which reduced Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, and countless others to runny-nosed tears, in the case of the Prime Minister on national television. Tank Man, or the Unknown Rebel, is the name commonly given an anonymous man, who became internationally famous, when he was videotaped and photographed during the Tiananmen Square protests on 5 June 1989. Several photographs were taken of the man, who is seen to positioning himself in front of a column of Chinese tanks, preventing their advance. Video footage taken by the BBC and CNN was also shown world-wide. It shows the lead tank attempting to go around the man, who moved sideways in order to block its forward movement, before climbing onto the tank, and speaking to a person presumed to be the tank commander. He then climbed down, and was hustled away by persons, who could have been ordinary bystanders, or equally likely plain-clothed security personnel. Some accounts have him executed by firing-squad, others still in hiding in mainland China. In April 1998, the United States magazine TIME included the "Unknown Rebel" in its 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

In the West, pictures of the Tank Man were presented as a symbol of the Chinese democracy movement; a Chinese youth risking his life to oppose a military juggernaut seemed a fitting representation of students bravely and spontaneously protesting against the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Government. The image resonated within democracies as a symbol of an individual's power to halt government and force a change in direction.

In the China, on the other hand, the image was used as a symbol of the care of the soldiers in protecting the Chinese people: despite orders to advance, the driver of the tank refused to do so if it meant injuring a single citizen. Tank Man was presented as a social delinquent, a symbol of irresponsible opportunist rioters during the Tiananmen Square protests, and as a possible agent provocateur of Western governments. As with most matters related to the 1989 protests, the Tank Man topic later became, and still remains, a political taboo in mainland China and unknown to most Chinese.

Recent events in Fiji have not produced a Tank Man, and are unlikely to do so. When questioned about the underlying reason for their passivity in the face of the unlawful assertion of power, most citizens refer to the guns held by the RFMF. However, the power of the image of the Tank Man tends to mask the common decency of the commander of the lead tank. He did not run the Tank Man down, as others were to do in following days in Tiananmen Square. He was prepared to lose face rather than take a life. Do citizens here really believe that ordinary members of the RFMF are lacking that same decency and would fire on an organized demonstration? Is it that which prevents the public protests, which would no doubt occur in other countries if democracy was ousted by force, or is it something else?

In his book Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity, United States scholar and economist, Francis Fukuyama examines the impact of culture on economic life, society, and success in the new global economy. He argues that the most pervasive cultural characteristic, influencing a nation's prosperity and ability to compete, is the level in that society of trust or cooperative behaviour based upon shared norms. In comparison with low-trust societies (China, France, Italy, Korea), which need to negotiate, and often litigate rules and regulations, high-trust societies like those in Germany and Japan are able to develop innovative organizations, and hold down the cost of doing business. Fukuyama argues that the United States, like Japan and Germany, has been a high-trust society historically, but that this status has eroded in recent years.

Whether the cause can be traced back to colonial policies of “Divide and rule”, or to even more longstanding tribal rivalries in indigenous communities, it seems undeniable that in Fiji a high level of the trust referred to by Fukuyama is absent, not only within communities, churches, social and professional organizations, but even within families, and Fiji is paying a high economic price for the deficiency, not only in terms of economic development, but more recently in the failure to oppose in an effective and reasoned way the recent assertion of military force in a manner which has caused, and will continue to cause economic hardship to its people. Attributed to 18th Century politician, Edmund Burke, and probably wrongly, is the much and variously-quoted maxim: ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’. So long as the good men, and women of Fiji, cannot trust each other, it is unlikely that anyone will have the courage to do anything. The absence of a Tank Man is not a function of the absence of tanks, but of the absence of trust.

• The author, Dr John Cameron is a lawyer who has visited, worked in, observed, and otherwise enjoyed Fiji for in excess of forty years.