This year is the 25th anniversary of a gesture by a young man, a gesture of courage, resistance and peace. Known as the Tiananmen Tank Man or the Unknown Demonstrator, this anonymous hero tried to stop a column of Chinese popular army tanks that were going to repress the concentration of students in Tiananmen Square. The photograph was taken by Jeff Widener, from Associated Press. This image is commonly used to symbolise the courage and strength of non-violence against armed repression. The incident took place in Beijing on 5 June 1989. Neither the identity of the man nor his destiny is known, but we cannot be optimistic. A British newspaper, The Sunday Express, identified him as Wang Weilin, a 19-year-old student, but the information was never verified and it was considered false or, at least, doubtful. Various reports coincide regarding what happened to the man after the event.
Bruce Herschensohn, former deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon reported that, 14 days later, the man was executed by a firing squad; others also say that he was executed, but a few months later. However, according to Jan Wong, he is still alive and hiding somewhere in China. The testimony of an eye witness to the events, published in October 2005 by Charlie Cole, a photographer of Newsweek magazine at that time, indicates that the man was arrested immediately after the incident by the Chinese Bureau of Public Security. The Chinese government has always hidden the facts and the truth. In an interview, in 1990, with the American journalist Barbara Walters, Jiang Zemin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China at the time, did not provide any clarification: he did not know if they had arrested him and did not think they had killed him. Time magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential 20th century individuals and his action has inspired protests everywhere. We will never know who he was or what has become of him, but the most important thing will always be what he did, his courageous and determined gesture: one man alone, unarmed, stubbornly trying to stop a column of tanks.