RELATED ARTICLES IN THIS WEBSITE: TIANANMEN SQUARE MASSACRE: EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS AND SURVIVOR STORIES AFTER MAO CHINA UNDER DENG XIAOPING: POLICIES, SPEECHES, SLOGANS AND POLITICS Good Websites and Sources on the Tiananmen Square Protests: Tiananmen Square Documents gwu.edu/ Wikipedia article Wikipedia BBC Eyewitness Account .uk Film: "The Gate of Heavenly Peace" has been praised for its balanced treatment of the Tiananmen Square Incident. Among them were many bystanders, including a 17-year-old high school student, a 27-year-old chemistry teacher, and a 30-year-old computer company employee who had been married for only a month. It seems that most of those killed were not student protesters but ordinary Beijing citizens, many of whom happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Other estimates range from 2,700 to much higher. ![]() The Chinese government death figure is 200. ![]() What occurred in these places is still largely unknown. Crackdowns also occurred in more than 200 cities all over China. Reports that the square was washed in blood were unfounded and it appears no one actually died within Tiananmen Square itself. Most of violence occurred on the Avenue of Eternal Peace on the southern side of the square and the Muxidi intersection in western Beijing. The massacre at Tiananmen Square didn't take place in Tiananmen Square but rather in the streets around it. Chase them into the clouds! Chase them until the earth opens, shoot and shoot into their flesh! Make another hole for the soul! Another hole for the stars! …” An army group storming out of the moon! Shoot! Strafe! Shoot! This is great! People and stars falling together. Squirt it on the traffic bridges, on the tower, on the railings! Let it splatter on the road! Shoot it into the sky and make stars! The stars are running away! The stars are growing legs, running away! Heaven and earth turning around. Liao Yiwu wrote in his poem“Massacre”:“Shoot through their skulls! Scorch them! Let their juice burst out. The massacre in Beijing and government led violence in many other cities were also a reminder that the Communist Party’s power grew out of the barrel of a gun. By then, protests had spread to more than eighty cities across China, with many thousands of demonstrators calling for some sort of more open, democratic political system that would end the corruption, privilege, and brutality of Communist rule. Ostensibly meant to clear Tiananmen Square of student protesters, it was actually a bloody show of force, a warning that the government would not tolerate outright opposition to its rule. Ian Johnson wrote in the New York Review of Books, “On the night of June 3–4, China’s paramount ruler, Deng Xiaoping, and a group of senior leaders unleashed the People’s Liberation Army on Beijing. Reporters that tried to investigate what happened have been roughed up by soldiers with cattle prods. ![]() The figure 2,000 dead is often cited but nobody but the Chinese authorities know how many people really died, partly because the bodies were carried off the night of the massacre and buried in secret graves. troops in some cases prevented doctors from treating wounded demonstrators. Hospitals were filled with casualties and P.L.A. Hundreds of students and supporters were killed. The tanks rolled over people that got in their way and soldiers opened fire on groups of protesters. The professor claimed he escaped to Taiwan and was employed by the National Palace Museum - although the museum allegedly denied this report.īruce Herschensohn, a former deputy special assistant to former US President Richard Nixon, told the President Club in 1999 that Tank Man was executed 14 days later.At 2:00am on June 4th 1989, People's Liberation Army tanks and 200,000 soldiers moved into Tiananmen Square in Beijing to crush a large pro-democracy demonstration that had been going on for seven weeks. We have checked through computers but can’t find him among the dead or among those in prison."Ī report cited a professor in Hong Kong who claimed Tank Man was an archaeologist, who had come to Beijing to join the protests. ![]() One government official was quoted as saying, "We can’t find him. Others claim police were never able to locate the man after he was pulled away from the crowd and back into the tanks. According to reports, American TV journalist Barbara Walters confronted Jiang a year after the incident with a photo of Tank Man and the question: “Do you have any idea what happened to this young man?” A flustered Jiang reportedly stressed that Tank Man had not been executed by the Government or run over.
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