@seahorse@midwest.social you’re being rightfully called out in this comments section.
https://redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen/
Numerous military buses, trucks, armored vehicles, and tanks being burned by the “peaceful” protesters. Sometimes the soldiers were allowed to escape, and sometimes they were brutally killed by the protesters. Numerous protesters were armed with Molotov cocktails and even guns.
The official report of the Chinese government from 1989 (translated here) shows that more than 1000 military and police vehicles were burned by rioters. And 200+ soldiers and policemen were murdered. Just imagine how much restraint the military and the police had shown.
Wait, how could the protesters kill so many soldiers? Because, until the very end, Chinese soldiers were unarmed. Most of the times, they didn’t even have helmets or batons.
What exactly happened in Beijing in 1989 that lead to this bloody affair?
The answer lies with two key figures: General Secretary Hu Yaobang, and Ambassador James Lilley.
Hu Yaobang was a member of the communist party of China and was one of the three major rightist-reformers that set China on the path its on today, the other two being Zhao Ziyang, and Deng Xiaoping respectively. Hu Yaobang as a reformer was also a spokesman for the intelligentsia and by the end of his life was well-beloved by the youth of China (we’re talking below 30 here, folks) therefore when he passed away the youth of China organized public grieving events with the largest occurring in Beijing. This is to say if Hu didn’t die from old age that year, none of this would’ve happened that year. This is to also say this event had nothing to do with “freedom” or “democracy” or whatever pigshit your favorite rush limburger propagandist spoon feeds you, it was a funeral service that was hijacked to unseat the Chinese government - which so coincidentally is a speciality of the agency the second person we’re talking about.
Ambassador James Lilley, the son of an american expat oil executive for Standard Oil, was a CIA agent operating in east Asia from 1951 to 1981 with little officially known about him (I know for a fact he’s fucked around Korea and Laos, so it’s not a stretch to say he’s likely been involved with every conflict that occured during his official career). In his “post” CIA career he’s acted as a diplomatic liason to the provice of Taiwan, a teacher to future state department ghouls, and “helped” South Korea end its military dicatorship by helping the military win the election “democratically”, and abruptly five days after the death of General Secretary Hu Yaobang James Lilley was appointed as the US Ambassador to China by also former CIA ghoul and president of the United States George H. W. Bush. What an astounding coincidence.
Credit to @Alaskaball@hexbear.net for the second part of this comment.
I would give you Hexbear gold if I could afford it. Instead you have my ungilded thanks.
But there’s no question many people were killed by the army that night around Tiananmen Square, and on the way to it — mostly in the western part of Beijing. Maybe, for some, comfort can be taken in the fact that the government denies that, too. CBS News
There was no Tiananmen Square massacre, but there was a Beijing massacre.
The shorthand we often use of the “Tiananmen Square protests” of 1989 gives the impression that this was just a Beijing issue. It was not. Protests occurred in almost every city in China (even in a town on the edge of the Gobi desert).
What happened in 1989 was by far the most widespread pro-democracy upheaval in communist China’s history. It was also by far the bloodiest suppression of peaceful dissent. BBC News
This reporter and many other witnesses saw troops shoot and kill people before dawn on June 4. But these shootings occurred in a different place from that described in the Wen Wei Po article and in somewhat different circumstances. […] Troops fired on civilians in many parts of the city, but the shooting was concentrated along the Avenue of Eternal Peace, or Changan Avenue, which runs on the north side of the square. There was heavy shooting in the Muxidi district to the west of Tiananmen Square, and there were also many casualties along the Avenue of Eternal Peace to the immediate east of the square, as well as on streets to the south of the square. NY Times
As to body count: I saw several people, young men, lying on flatbed tricycles being carried away from the square. They were inert and covered in blood. Dead or wounded, I have no idea. On the afternoon of June 4, I saw people fall on Changan Avenue as troops opened fire on them. I have no idea if they were wounded, killed or simply fainting.
How many people died that night in Beijing? What was the price of the years of superficial political stability that followed?
Most of the killing did not take place on or near the Square, that is clear. The official line, first espoused by Communist Party propaganda guru Yuan Mu a couple of nights later on national television, was that 23 people had died on the night of June 3/4. It was ludicrous. Nobody who was in Beijing at that time believed it.
In the weeks that followed, Amnesty International did the most thorough survey of the Tiananmen casualty toll. They spoke to everyone who could help build the picture. They questioned me at length in Tokyo, whwre In was already staying in a hotel prior to a move to Hong Kong to become Asian News Editor (a career boost from Tiananmen, perhaps?). Their report estimated 3,000 dead, with most of the killing taking place in the Muxidi district of western Beijing, where outraged Beijing residents — not students — tried to stop the army from entering their city. That number seems a bit high to me, but who knows? If I had to make a wild stab, from what I know and felt, I’d say several hundred were killed, but I have no proof of any number. Until the archives are opened in China’s next era and we can see the truth, surely recorded there somewhere, Amnesty’s 3,000 is the best outside estimate we have. REUTERS: Graham Earnshaw
ALTHOUGH HE DID NOT ACTUALLY WITNESS ANY LARGE SCALE SHOOTINGS ON THE SQUARE PROPER, GALLO SAW MANY CASUALTIES BROUGHT INTO THE SQUARE AND DID NOT DOUBT THAT HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE IN BEIJING WERE KILLED BY THE ARMY ON JUNE 3 AND 4. A Wikileaks cable
I’m a little confused about what the main contention is here. Most of the links you shared still say that people died and there was a massacre, even though the quotes you pulled out all seem to indicate that no one died at all.
The problem is not so much putting the murders in the wrong place, but suggesting that most of the victims were students. Black and Munro say “what took place was the slaughter not of students but of ordinary workers and residents — precisely the target that the Chinese government had intended.” They argue that the government was out to suppress a rebellion of workers, who were much more numerous and had much more to be angry about than the students. This was the larger story that most of us overlooked or underplayed. […] Not only has the error made the American press’s frequent pleas for the truth about Tiananmen seem shallow, but it has allowed the bloody-minded regime responsible for the June 4 murders to divert attention from what happened. There was a massacre that morning. Journalists have to be precise about where it happened and who were its victims, or readers and viewers will never be able to understand what it meant. The Myth of Tiananmen from Emizeko
Are you trying to suggest that China was correct to do whatever it did June 3rd and 4th? Or are you upset that the violence all around the area is being lumped into one big Tiananmen Square Massacre, even though no one probably died inside the actual square?
Yes but the people killed outside the square were actually armed and had killed police officers already. There were people demonstrating inside the square that did not, for example, lynch and burn police officers alive.
So what, you want to say China squashed a rebellion? Suppressed a riot? Dispersed a violent protest?
Do you believe that martial law was declared a few weeks earlier? I’m trying to get a baseline for what you think happened, so far from this thread I’m seeing something between “no civilians were injured” and “it was a violent mob that needed to be stopped by any means.”
additional context for what Nakoichi said, the cops and soldiers killed were mostly (I say mostly as a hedge not because I have any evidence suggesting otherwise) unarmed. So please don’t think the protesters were using violence against violence or anything, they were hunting down and brutally killing unarmed people.
Is police/military presence at a protest not a form of violence by way of intimidation and suppression? Even assuming none of them were armed, wouldn’t their presence be a form of escalation?
And I’m surprised how empathetic and defensive you’re being towards cops considering some of the other comments coming out of hexbear (1) (2) (3)
I would be careful with this particular point (emphasis mine):
The article does not say where the “half” figure comes from or give evidence for soldier deaths being that high. The estimate is only mentioned briefly in passing.
Some calculations have up to half the dead being PLA soldiers trapped in their armored personnel carriers, buses and tanks as the vehicles were torched.
Fair, this is me copying @Alaskaball@hexbear.net’s old comment. He might have some thoughts on it, or agree with the criticism.
@ringwraithfish@startrek.website Oh yeah you come on in here too since I assume it was you who reported me motherfucker.
The eye of sauron doesn’t miss asshole. Come on defend your position you cowardly piece of shit
From the context it seems that they were referring to pushing back on liberal assumptions about the Tiananmen square incident.
Hurt my feelings?! No man you made me laugh my ass off when I woke up to this and I just wanted to share the joy of shitting on you for being a historically illiterate piece of shit fascist adjacent liberal.
Welcome to the thunderdome motherfucker.
Damn, reaching back into the ‘aw somebody hurt your feefees’ level of response, despite no actual textual indication that feelings were hurt. Idk why I’d expect anything more, but this is some old-school shit.
Hey, since they came in here (which I honestly commend them for doing edit, nm, I take that back, they didn’t come in good faith but with a sarcastic “your feelings hurt, poor baby?” sneering insult.) someone explain to this brave antiauthoritarian lib that all governments, capitalist and communist and any other form will always use “authoritarianism,” (which Nakoichi never said otherwise from what I could see). But that unless you’re like a factory owner, landleech, CEO of a tech or oil conglomerate, or otherwise a member of the class that rules as part of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, then a state using its authority to prevent those leeches from exploiting you, a state using it’s authority to maintain a society where people are free to not worry about having to be homeless or starve to death in abject poverty is a good thing, actually.
To their credit, the ringwraithfish seems to understand the first part, but the rest of it, the most important parts, seems completely lost on them. Too wrapped up, I suspect, in their insistence on hating those “redfash tankies” to realize they’re just parroting and carrying water for the worst authoritarian imperialists on the planet.
(referring to this)
@seahorse@midwest.social You should reign in your fragile mods that ban users for simply pointing out uncomfortable truths about western propaganda cuz this is a really bad look.
Edit: nevermind it was you that banned me lol
You’re a coward, a liberal and a western chauvinist piece of shit and I will advocate immediate defederation if you do not answer for this bullshit.
Seahorse is not going to see this because they banned you from the site for a year.
A weird artifact of Lemmy v0.19.4 & v0.19.5 is that, when an admin bans you from their site, you also automatically get banned from every comm you’ve participated in for the same amount of time.
I should have cc’d @QuietCupcake@hexbear.net☝️
I should have cc’d @QuietCupcake@hexbear.net☝️
hey hey!
Seahorse is not going to see this because they banned you from the site for a year.
But if I tag @seahorse@midwest.social they will, yes?
@seahorse@midwest.social lol wrecked
Not sure if they can see anything under my comment since I am banned you might need to make a new top level comment or a new post idk how this shit works.
You got banned? Smh those midwest tankies just can’t handle having their echo chamber challenged
The Tian’anmen Square ‘Massacre’: The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie | Mango Press
Another View of Tiananmen | Red Sails
yeah i saw that shit right after it happened, i actually laughed. evil tankie bbc is just xinhua in a trench coat
I have a new project I am working on. I am transcribing my great grandfather’s book about our family’s flight from british rule in occupied Ireland.
Some thought the agent was doing this with the knowledge or permission of the land lord. Mathew Martin, my grandfather, was one who thought that way. When refused his lease for the usual reason, he went to the land lord and was told he would be given–a ninety-nine years lease, to him and his heirs rent free–if he would promise to have his children brought up in the English Church.
I have heard them say that Grandfather told the man he might go where he could light his pipe with the end of his finger. But I suspect he was wise enough not to say that until he was where neither landlord nor agent could hear him. Such Language would have caused his arrest and imprisonment. Whether he said it or not does not matter. What he did was to hurry home and take himself out of his holding (little farm) before the bailiff had a chance to evict him.
This was in 1843, and Mathew Martin, with his wife and three children - Joseph, Hannah and Edmund, bade goodby to Ireland and took the long road to America.
Folks were way more creative with their insults back then.
