Ding Zilin
| Ding Zilin | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 20, 1936 Shanghai, China |
| Spouse(s) | Jiang Peikun (m. 1934; d. 2015) |
| Children | Jiang Jielian |
Ding Zilin (Chinese: 丁子霖; born December 20, 1936 or January 1, 1939) is a retired professor of philosophy and the leader of the political pressure group Tiananmen Mothers.
Ding, born in Shanghai on December 20, 1936, was professor of philosophy at Renmin University of China in Beijing. Her husband, Jiang Peikun (蔣培坤), was head of the Aesthetics Institute at the university.
Ding's seventeen-year-old son, Jiang Jielian (蔣捷連), was one of the first to be killed when the People's Liberation Army crushed the Tiananmen Square protests. He left the family home in defiance of the curfew. Accounts vary of what happened next. Eyewitnesses had told her that her son was shot and was left to bleed to death on the night of June 3, 1989. Ding says he was shot through the heart by riot police on the way to Tiananmen Square. He was rushed to the Beijing Children's Hospital, where he was pronounced "Dead on arrival".
Following her son's death, Ding said she attempted suicide six times.
In August 1989, she met another bereaved mother, and found a commonality within the self-help group, which continued growing. She formed a network of some 150 other families who had lost sons and daughters during the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, and this group became known as "Tiananmen Mothers". Ever since that day, she has been asking the government to apologize for the deaths. She and some others have faced imprisonment, house-arrest, phone-tapping and constant surveillance.
In 1991, after an interview she gave to ABC News, the government prevented her and her husband from carrying out their work or research, and were barred from publishing domestically. Party membership was revoked. In addition, she was detained for more than 40 days. She was forced into early retirement. Since her release, she was under close supervision by the authorities. Harassment continued when on September 9, 1994, she was arrested in front of the University and held by police for two hours, for having had published an article in the foreign media "hurtful to the people". Again in 1995, she and her husband were arrested in Wuxi on August 18 and incarcerated until September 30, allegedly on "economic matters", and were denied visitors. In 1996 Ding's husband was forced to retire early. Since February 28, 2000, she has been under 24-hour surveillance by the authorities.
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