Li Peng

Beijing, Aug. 18 (Reuters): Chinese ex-Premier Li Peng, dubbed the Butcher of Beijing for declaring martial law days before troops crushed the 1989 Tiananmen protests, has defended his role in the massacre by invoking late leader Deng Xiaoping for the first time.

Analysts saw the essay, titled Commemorating Deng Xiaoping, as an attempt by Li to wash his hands of the controversial decision and clear his name. In a rare essay published in the monthly magazine Seeking Truth, a Communist Party mouthpiece, Li said Deng had “firmly and forcefully backed” the government’s decision to send troops and tanks into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Hundreds were killed on June 3-4 when the army crushed the student-led pro-democracy demonstrations that had occupied the square for several weeks. Li, who had gone on television to declare martial law just days beforehand, was widely blamed for the carnage.

“A serious political disturbance took place in China between the spring and summer of 1989,” the 75-year-old Li wrote in the article published just before Sunday’s 100th anniversary of Deng’s birth.

“With the boldness of vision of a great revolutionary and politician, comrade Deng Xiaoping and other old comrades firmly and forcefully backed resolute measures by the party and the government without delay,” said Li, who as Premier at the time was reviled throughout China for his role in the crackdown. Deng died in 1997 at the age of 92.

Analysts said the party’s elite 198-member Central Committee had approved publication of the essay in its magazine, indicating that the leadership had no intention of overturning the official verdict that the protests were a “counter-revolutionary rebellion”, or subversive.

The idea of a political reappraisal of the protests, strongly demanded by dissidents, makes China’s leaders nervous. The government bans public commemoration of the anniversary, fearing it could spark fresh protests.