"They are Writing History" opens with a rapid fire sequence of images of Tiananmen Square. Old black and white footage of a cluster of students protesting in May 1919 gives way to shots of a sea of marching Red Guards holding aloft their Little Red Books followed by scenes of pandemonium and scrambling students and soldiers after the shooting began in June. "Tiananmen Square was crying sadly," a narrator's voice begins. "For forty years, it has been looking coldly on the Communist Party of China which again and again repeated its bloody crackdowns on dissidents. Yet the square had never felt so hopeless and helpless facing the dawn of June 4."
The Arts Center appealed the cut. Their plea was that Article 19, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, had been ignored.
Source: Margret Scott, "Fear Thy Neighbour", Far Eastern Economic Review, February 1, 1990, Pg. 28-29