![Avatar](/_next/image?url=%2Flemmy-icon-96x96.webp&w=3840&q=75)
ltxrtquq
Oooooooh, ok. There it is. You are just making shit up and telling us people are saying things that they aren’t actually saying.
Are you just going line by line and didn’t want to waste your effort on the first two paragraphs you wrote?
It’s almost like no matter which details from first-hand accounts you choose to go with
Some have found it uncomfortable that all this conforms with what the Chinese government has always claimed, perhaps with a bit of sophistry: that there was no “massacre in Tiananmen Square.”
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
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
those ambiguities only show us that even where things are uncertain and discrepancies in first-hand accounts exist, they come nowhere near to the claims of the massacre narrative
Apparently I read half a dozen of the wrong first hand accounts.
You may even be shocked to learn how many of those student were protesting the liberalizing of the economy
I really don’t care about this, the students weren’t the ones killed for the most part. They’re basically irrelevant to the conversation, aren’t they?
there are discrepancies in the exact number of deaths, which no one here has denied
Right now the biggest discrancy I’m seeing is that most of the people here want to tell me that almost half of the people killed were state employees, but that red sails articlesays the official number is closer to 10%. That, and the fact that there really is no official number because China doesn’t talk about it and doesn’t want anyone else to either.
But I’m getting tired of answering your homework questions for you.
You’d think that after a few decades someone would have done that homework and posted it online somewhere. But I guess it’s everyone’s responsibility to become an amateur historian to figure it out themselves.
Can you point out where you’re seeing those things specifically?
The “no civilians were injured” is coming from Awoo pulling quotes out of the links and “it was a violent mob that needed to be stopped by any means” is from Nakoichi. Both of them are my interpretations of what they said, only slightly exaggerated.
Here is a bit from one of the links already provided
First off, that bit isn’t from the link unless you’re summarizing it for me, in which case thank you.
But second, that article picks and chooses what information it wants from its sources even if the sources overall contradict each other. It uses a wikileaks source from earlier to say there were no deaths at the monument, but later uses a declassified document to confirm the death toll that says “TROOPS BACKED BY TANKS AND ARMORED PERSONNEL CARRIERS BATTLED CROWDS 0F CIVILIANS FOR SEVEN HOURS BEFORE REACHING THE SQUARE SHORTLY BEFORE DAWN TODAY BEIJING TlME . STUDENT DEMONSTRATORS BEGAN TO LEAVE TIANANMAN BEFORE THE TROOPS MOVED IN; TROOPS OPENED FlRE ON THOSE WHO REMAINED”.
It says Amnesty International reapeats a bunch of lies and puts the death toll between 1,000-10,000 but the source it links as proof of this claim only briefly mentions Amnesty International, and says they put the death toll closer to 1,000 and doesn’t mention any claims they might have made. EDIT: also, your summary goes against the “official record” from China: you’re saying 100-150 of the dead were cops/military, but the article says “The 23 military deaths included 10 from the PLA and 13 from the People’s Armed Police.”
It goes to great lengths to describe the student’s movement and how barely any students were killed, but doesn’t dwell too much on who was killed, and what their motivations might have been, why they were so willing to set fire to vehicles and put their lives on the line.
How is an unarmed person violence?
Because that person is a cop or military member ordered there by the state specifically to oppose a protest.
Genuinely, what violence were they engaging in if a bunch of liberal students burned them alive without dying?
I don’t know what you think happened June 3rd and 4th 1989 in Beijing, but I’m lead to believe that plenty of civilians died.
Look up the pictures, watch the videos, Chinese police are very different than the ones we are used to. Think the old times type of dude with bright sticks directing traffic.
BEIJING, CHINA - 1989/06/01: Pro-democracy demonstrators sit in front of soldiers who are lined up, standing guard outside the Chinese Communist Party’s headquarters on Chiangan Avenue just days before the bloody crackdown on students and protestors in and around Tiananmen Square… (Photo by Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images)
People Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers leap over a barrier on Tiananmen Square in central Beijing 04 June 1989 during heavy clashes with people and dissident students. On the night of 03 and 04 June 1989, Tiananmen Square sheltered the last pro-democracy supporters. In a show of force, China leaders vented their fury and frustration on student dissidents and their pro-democracy supporters. Several hundred people have been killed and thousands wounded when soldiers moved on Tiananmen Square during a violent military crackdown ending six weeks of student demonstrations, known as the Beijing Spring movement. According to Amnesty International, five years after the crushing of the Chinese pro-democracy movement, “thousands” of prisoners remained in jail. (Photo by CATHERINE HENRIETTE / AFP) (Photo by CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)
Honestly, that’s not the vibe I’m getting.
Cops under capital =/= peace officers under socialism. […] while also recognizing that that isn’t the same thing as a cop protecting the revolution.
I’m actually not well versed on the topic as I’m sure you can tell, but are the people living under the revolution supposed to be able to have their complaints and desires heard? If not, who decides what the revolution’s goals and priorities are, and how different is it really from the life I know in the US?
So if we can agree that the secondary aggressor has lesser culpability then even then the “violence” of trying to keep the peace was self defense.
I’ve always been of the opinion that those with more power and resources should bear more of the responsibility in a conflict, but maybe that’s a naive way of looking at things.
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)
Alright, well I read the ones linked above because they’re credible enough to dismiss the massacre in Tiananmen square, but they’re also saying things like residents were trying to stop the transport of troops and weapons into the square and that there definitely was a massacre in the surrounding area, just not in the square we use to reference it.
Is that a good enough investigation, or do you want to point me to a more credible source that actually explains what you think happened?
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.”
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?
I seem to recall Trump signing some kind of treaty promising all troops would be pulled out near the start of Biden’s term, and then there was a big panic as everyone left in a rush because we didn’t really plan it all that well. Weren’t there a lot of videos of people running alongside airplanes that were taking off, and something about our old bases being found mostly intact?
Food in the past was kind of incredible in the “I can’t believe people used to live like that” way.