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.”
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.”
Can you point out where you’re seeing those things specifically?
I’m trying to get a baseline for what you think happened
We (at least many of us) have read the sources that have been linked. What is described there, particularly the accounts of people who were there, is what we assert is what happened. In the few instances where there may be contradictory first hand accounts (and mostly, the accounts are not contradictory but rather corroborate each other) there may be some ambiguity. But even taking that into account, it is ridiculous and downright ahistorical to say “Chinese authorities massacred people.”
For the most part, this hasn’t even been about making moral judgment calls, which sounds like what you’re fishing for and why you seem to think it’s difficult to parse our position. This is partially implied by your phrasing “suppressed a riot? dispersed a violent protest?” etc. This has been about us just saying: Look, here is how things actually went down <see links> and by no stretch can that be called “a massacre” unless you want to also say that protesters in the streets were “massacring” soldiers and cops. Also, all of this happened relatively far away from the square, which is relevant because that is where many students were protesting and where the imagery for the “Tiananmen Massacre” false narrative comes from. Unless I have missed a comment or two somewhere, no one here is saying that “no civilians were injured.” In fact I think your phrasing of it that way is dishonestly projecting a position onto us that none of us hold. People were killed on both sides of the conflict, and indeed it was PLA soldiers who were killed first which unsurprisingly, understandably culminated in a violent response. The narrative that the CPC ordered the PLA to massacre unarmed student protesters is just a load of propagandistic horse shit.
In essence, it [the false western narrative] says that Chinese authorities massacred unarmed student protesters demanding democracy, slaughtering thousands and even tens of thousands in and around Tiananmen Square. Extensive subsequent research and many eyewitness accounts have shown conclusively that none of this is true. The most reliable estimate, from many sources, was that the tragedy took 200-300 lives. Few were students, many were rebellious workers, plus thugs with lethal weapons and hapless bystanders. 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. Others were killed and brutally mutilated by protesters with various implements. No one died in Tiananmen Square; most deaths occurred on nearby Chang’an Avenue, many up to a kilometer or more away from the square.
There’s your “baseline” for what we “think” happened.
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.
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.
If you’re going to say that I said no civilians were injured at least do the courtesy of pinging me so I can send you this link to read
Seriously though. Don’t say things that I did not say.
The point made by everyone discussing this topic is not that there were no deaths, it’s that the western narrative about the topic is in fact entirely a lie. There was no “massacre” of poor unarmed students at Tiananmen in the square as is popularly lied about by redditors.
There were no tanks running people over. As is popularly lied about by redditors posting that stupid picture of a bunch of bicycles on the floor either.
What ACTUALLY happened at Tiananmen was that a combination of communists and liberals got led on by people that WANTED to see a massacre happen. They intended for everyone there to die that day, we even have interview proof of that.
What ACTUALLY happened was that a protest got wildly out of hand because leadership wanted it to. They hanged and burned alive two unarmed police officers, and then the protest was broken up. What then transpired across several kilometers were various different sporadic battles between armed protestors and the PLA. Resulting in several hundred deaths.
This is corroborated by western eyewitnesses that I’ve linked and showed you.
The point of this topic is not to deny that deaths happened. It is to correct the story, the lie that is told is one of an utterly cartoonishly evil crackdown on peaceful protestors resulting in a massacre of innocent students that were gunned down in cold blood in the square. But the reality I’ve just told you is VERY different and the emotional reaction anyone should have to it should be extremely different to that of the lie. The lie is perpetuated in order to claim China is evil, that this event was evil, this is very far from the truth and once people open their eyes to how much this particular event has been lied about it starts to make them question what else has been lied about or exaggerated to the extreme.
Worth adding, to clear up a point of possible confusion — There is no evidence for deaths in the square itself. There were deaths elsewhere in the city that night, but these were violent clashes in which soldiers also died, and the death toll was in the low hundreds, not thousands. This is what we’re all saying in this thread.
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
You linked to Awoo’s comment to say that she said (or quoted someone who said?) that there were no civilian injuries. But a ctrl-f of ‘civilian’ shows the word mentioned nowhere in her comment. In your replies to that comment, where you quote from some of the linked sources only shows cases of people talking about civilian injuries! Please point directly to someone saying, or even implying, that “no civilians were injured.” It may be there, and I’ll wait for you to actually point it out if it is, but until then, it sure as hell looks to me like you’re making shit up and expecting us not to double check.
“it was a violent mob that needed to be stopped by any means” is from Nakoichi.
What Nakoichi said in the comment you linked was:
“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.”
None of that has anything to do with “needing to be stopped by any means.” It is simply stating what happened and showing beyond any shadow of doubt that the claim of CPC/PLA/Any Chinese authority conducting a “massacre” but rather instead responding in an entirely understandable and justified way to extreme violence and murder of their comrades.
Both of them are my interpretations of what they said, only slightly exaggerated.
Oooooooh, ok. There it is. You are just making shit up and telling us people are saying things that they aren’t actually saying.
First off, that bit isn’t from the link unless you’re summarizing it for me, in which case thank you.
Yeah, it looks like I pasted a different link than the one with the text I quoted. My bad on what is essentially a typo. This is the link I meant to paste that does correspond to the text I quoted and that was one of the sources already linked above: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/
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”.
There is no contradiction there. Opening fire on the remaining students does not mean that students were killed at the monument. But all of that is immaterial anyway. It’s a fucking nitpick. Like you liberals will accuse us of nitpicking about “no actual deaths in the Square” because they happened exclusively (or almost exclusively) in other areas. And as I said, the reason that is singled out is because of the way the false narrative is built around the square itself. It would be an irrelevant detail whether people were killed there or not, were it not for the fact that the picture that anti-Sino western narrative deliberately paints of a massacre that didn’t happen, is centered around and built upon those details. But in this case, you really are just saying “nu uh! I caught you in a contradiction because one source said people died in this spot and another says they didn’t!” which first of all, doesn’t even matter to the context we’re providing here that… again… there was no “massacre,” and secondly was something I already addressed in my previous comment where I specifically mentioned that contradictions in the details of first hand accounts does mean there is some ambiguity around those specific details. Provide us with something that isn’t just a detail that is ultimately inconsequential and that has nothing to do with the invalidity of the “massacre narrative.”
As for your other “gotcha,” there are discrepancies in the exact number of deaths, which no one here has denied and again, I addressed in my last comment where I said: “In the few instances where there may be contradictory first hand accounts (and mostly, the accounts are not contradictory but rather corroborate each other) there may be some ambiguity.” It’s funny how you seemed to have latched onto trying to find those ambiguities, but totally ignored the whole reason I said that. Once again, 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, in this case the blatantly spurious death toll of many thousands. It’s almost like no matter which details from first-hand accounts you choose to go with, all of them discount the bullshit that the US State Department would like us to believe about the evil See See Pee via their PLA soldier-goons gunned down gorillions of innocent students and ran over poor Tank Man. (The student thing is especially ironic, given the militarized police crackdown students in the US are right now having to face while they protest a literal genocide the US is funding and helping to perpetrate, but that is obviously for another thread).
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.
Well, then keep reading the sources that have been generously provided by @Awoo@hexbear.net and others and maybe even do some of your own research. You may even be shocked to learn how many of those student were protesting the liberalizing of the economy and were against the increasing influence of capital, wanting to remain ideologically and economically socialist. But I’m getting tired of answering your homework questions for you. I’ve got my own work to do, good night/day/whatever.
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.
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.
It has, but every time a liberal decides they want to dissect it they latch onto some irrelevant distinction without a difference pretends they just don’t understand what’s being asserted.
QuietCupcake is affirming the casualties you’re pointing to in your pullquotes, but is arguing that because most did not occur in the square itself as described in the westernized accounting of the event and because the violent response started when protestors assaulted and killed several officers, the label of a ‘massacre’ is an intentionally misleading description that ignores what actually happened. There being a couple hundred casualties doesn’t make the event a ‘massacre’ and honestly I think you know this. Given that you haven’t defended the term but have only complained about discrepancies in first-hand accounting makes me think you know it’s an indefensible description.
Right now the biggest discrancy[sic] 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%.
Oh look, you did the thing QuietCupcake was pointing out you were doing right after he pointed it out
As for your other “gotcha,” there are discrepancies in the exact number of deaths, which no one here has denied and again, I addressed in my last comment where I said: “In the few instances where there may be contradictory first hand accounts (and mostly, the accounts are not contradictory but rather corroborate each other) there may be some ambiguity.” It’s funny how you seemed to have latched onto trying to find those ambiguities, but totally ignored the whole reason I said that.
‘I’m just trying to get answers so I can understand.’ Bullshit. You’re farming for vague details so that you can dismiss the broader point being made and keep your a-historical and politically-motivated description that was suggested to you from decades of red-scare propaganda.
It has, but every time a liberal decides they want to dissect it they latch onto some irrelevant distinction without a difference pretends they just don’t understand what’s being asserted.
So why weren’t those linked? Why do I need to read 5 articles that say there was a massacre, just around the square and not in it, written by or about people who were actually there, just to get to a blog post that links those same articles and selectively pulls quotes to try and convince me that there wasn’t a massacre?
There being a couple hundred casualties doesn’t make the event a ‘massacre’ and honestly I think you know this. Given that you haven’t defended the term but have only complained about discrepancies in first-hand accounting makes me think you know it’s an indefensible description.
If January 6th ended with the federal government sending in tanks and hundreds dead, but everything else about it stayed about the same, I would still call it a massacre, or at the very least understand why others would.
Oh look, you did the thing QuietCupcake was pointing out you were doing right after he pointed it out
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.
And you ignored the second point I made, that we really can’t know too many details about what happened. And yet everyone’s so certain they know the full story, and it just so happens to align with what the government is[n’t] saying.
‘I’m just trying to get answers so I can understand.’ Bullshit. You’re farming for vague details so that you can dismiss the broader point being made and keep your a-historical and politically-motivated description that was suggested to you from decades of red-scare propaganda.
After having read the articles, I’m more convinced now that a massacre did happen, it just wasn’t in the square and mostly didn’t involve students. Yet everyone here seems to want to say that there was no massacre at all, it was a government declaring martial law and putting down a violent rebellion with overwhelming force. I’m not sure that’s much better, but whatever.
I’m just saying it wasn’t the massacre of wholesome pro democracy protesters like every lib assumes. There were actual skirmishes outside the square but there were people actually murdering police and shit. There are more than enough sources in this thread for you to do your own investigation. As Mao said, no investigation, no right to speak.
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?
Alright, then who was being burned alive? Because I was under the impression it was the military/police. Nakoichi is saying that they burned people alive and that’s why the military was sent in, but it was the military being burned alive, meaning they were already there.
China did not have specialized riot police at the time, it flatout wasn’t ever necessary. The PLA was the only force existing with the manpower and equipment to handle the situation.
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)
How is an unarmed person violence? Genuinely, what violence were they engaging in if a bunch of liberal students burned them alive without dying? Look up the pictures, watch the videos, Chinese police are very different than the ones we (assuming you’re in a country that’s any degree of westernized) are used to. Think the old times type of dude with bright sticks directing traffic.
Cops under capital =/= peace officers under socialism. I very much wish a terrible fate to American cops while also recognizing that that isn’t the same thing as a cop protecting the revolution. We are capable of nuance here.
Furthermore, even if I were to concede the “the presence of authority is violence” point (side note, are you a libertarian? Not trying to dunk, just wish to understand where you are coming from) the first violence was from the protestors (who were led by a woman that straight up said she wanted people to die for propaganda purposes, it’s on video, it’s on YouTube). 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.
Oh, and do you know what the inciting incident was? The initial core of the student movement was opposing liberalization. The protest hijacked by the anti communist mentioned above (who fled to America btw, wanted her followers to die for cynical reasons yet considered herself too important).
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.
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.
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.”
Can you point out where you’re seeing those things specifically?
We (at least many of us) have read the sources that have been linked. What is described there, particularly the accounts of people who were there, is what we assert is what happened. In the few instances where there may be contradictory first hand accounts (and mostly, the accounts are not contradictory but rather corroborate each other) there may be some ambiguity. But even taking that into account, it is ridiculous and downright ahistorical to say “Chinese authorities massacred people.”
For the most part, this hasn’t even been about making moral judgment calls, which sounds like what you’re fishing for and why you seem to think it’s difficult to parse our position. This is partially implied by your phrasing “suppressed a riot? dispersed a violent protest?” etc. This has been about us just saying: Look, here is how things actually went down <see links> and by no stretch can that be called “a massacre” unless you want to also say that protesters in the streets were “massacring” soldiers and cops. Also, all of this happened relatively far away from the square, which is relevant because that is where many students were protesting and where the imagery for the “Tiananmen Massacre” false narrative comes from. Unless I have missed a comment or two somewhere, no one here is saying that “no civilians were injured.” In fact I think your phrasing of it that way is dishonestly projecting a position onto us that none of us hold. People were killed on both sides of the conflict, and indeed it was PLA soldiers who were killed first which unsurprisingly, understandably culminated in a violent response. The narrative that the CPC ordered the PLA to massacre unarmed student protesters is just a load of propagandistic horse shit.
Here is a bit from one of the links already provided:
There’s your “baseline” for what we “think” happened.
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.
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.
If you’re going to say that I said no civilians were injured at least do the courtesy of pinging me so I can send you this link to read
Seriously though. Don’t say things that I did not say.
The point made by everyone discussing this topic is not that there were no deaths, it’s that the western narrative about the topic is in fact entirely a lie. There was no “massacre” of poor unarmed students at Tiananmen in the square as is popularly lied about by redditors.
There were no tanks running people over. As is popularly lied about by redditors posting that stupid picture of a bunch of bicycles on the floor either.
What ACTUALLY happened at Tiananmen was that a combination of communists and liberals got led on by people that WANTED to see a massacre happen. They intended for everyone there to die that day, we even have interview proof of that.
What ACTUALLY happened was that a protest got wildly out of hand because leadership wanted it to. They hanged and burned alive two unarmed police officers, and then the protest was broken up. What then transpired across several kilometers were various different sporadic battles between armed protestors and the PLA. Resulting in several hundred deaths.
This is corroborated by western eyewitnesses that I’ve linked and showed you.
The point of this topic is not to deny that deaths happened. It is to correct the story, the lie that is told is one of an utterly cartoonishly evil crackdown on peaceful protestors resulting in a massacre of innocent students that were gunned down in cold blood in the square. But the reality I’ve just told you is VERY different and the emotional reaction anyone should have to it should be extremely different to that of the lie. The lie is perpetuated in order to claim China is evil, that this event was evil, this is very far from the truth and once people open their eyes to how much this particular event has been lied about it starts to make them question what else has been lied about or exaggerated to the extreme.
Worth adding, to clear up a point of possible confusion — There is no evidence for deaths in the square itself. There were deaths elsewhere in the city that night, but these were violent clashes in which soldiers also died, and the death toll was in the low hundreds, not thousands. This is what we’re all saying in this thread.
You linked to Awoo’s comment to say that she said (or quoted someone who said?) that there were no civilian injuries. But a ctrl-f of ‘civilian’ shows the word mentioned nowhere in her comment. In your replies to that comment, where you quote from some of the linked sources only shows cases of people talking about civilian injuries! Please point directly to someone saying, or even implying, that “no civilians were injured.” It may be there, and I’ll wait for you to actually point it out if it is, but until then, it sure as hell looks to me like you’re making shit up and expecting us not to double check.
What Nakoichi said in the comment you linked was:
“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.”
None of that has anything to do with “needing to be stopped by any means.” It is simply stating what happened and showing beyond any shadow of doubt that the claim of CPC/PLA/Any Chinese authority conducting a “massacre” but rather instead responding in an entirely understandable and justified way to extreme violence and murder of their comrades.
Oooooooh, ok. There it is. You are just making shit up and telling us people are saying things that they aren’t actually saying.
Yeah, it looks like I pasted a different link than the one with the text I quoted. My bad on what is essentially a typo. This is the link I meant to paste that does correspond to the text I quoted and that was one of the sources already linked above: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/
There is no contradiction there. Opening fire on the remaining students does not mean that students were killed at the monument. But all of that is immaterial anyway. It’s a fucking nitpick. Like you liberals will accuse us of nitpicking about “no actual deaths in the Square” because they happened exclusively (or almost exclusively) in other areas. And as I said, the reason that is singled out is because of the way the false narrative is built around the square itself. It would be an irrelevant detail whether people were killed there or not, were it not for the fact that the picture that anti-Sino western narrative deliberately paints of a massacre that didn’t happen, is centered around and built upon those details. But in this case, you really are just saying “nu uh! I caught you in a contradiction because one source said people died in this spot and another says they didn’t!” which first of all, doesn’t even matter to the context we’re providing here that… again… there was no “massacre,” and secondly was something I already addressed in my previous comment where I specifically mentioned that contradictions in the details of first hand accounts does mean there is some ambiguity around those specific details. Provide us with something that isn’t just a detail that is ultimately inconsequential and that has nothing to do with the invalidity of the “massacre narrative.”
As for your other “gotcha,” there are discrepancies in the exact number of deaths, which no one here has denied and again, I addressed in my last comment where I said: “In the few instances where there may be contradictory first hand accounts (and mostly, the accounts are not contradictory but rather corroborate each other) there may be some ambiguity.” It’s funny how you seemed to have latched onto trying to find those ambiguities, but totally ignored the whole reason I said that. Once again, 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, in this case the blatantly spurious death toll of many thousands. It’s almost like no matter which details from first-hand accounts you choose to go with, all of them discount the bullshit that the US State Department would like us to believe about the evil See See Pee via their PLA soldier-goons gunned down gorillions of innocent students and ran over poor Tank Man. (The student thing is especially ironic, given the militarized police crackdown students in the US are right now having to face while they protest a literal genocide the US is funding and helping to perpetrate, but that is obviously for another thread).
Well, then keep reading the sources that have been generously provided by @Awoo@hexbear.net and others and maybe even do some of your own research. You may even be shocked to learn how many of those student were protesting the liberalizing of the economy and were against the increasing influence of capital, wanting to remain ideologically and economically socialist. But I’m getting tired of answering your homework questions for you. I’ve got my own work to do, good night/day/whatever.
Are you just going line by line and didn’t want to waste your effort on the first two paragraphs you wrote?
Apparently I read half a dozen of the wrong first hand accounts.
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?
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.
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.
It has, but every time a liberal decides they want to dissect it they latch onto some irrelevant distinction without a difference pretends they just don’t understand what’s being asserted.
QuietCupcake is affirming the casualties you’re pointing to in your pullquotes, but is arguing that because most did not occur in the square itself as described in the westernized accounting of the event and because the violent response started when protestors assaulted and killed several officers, the label of a ‘massacre’ is an intentionally misleading description that ignores what actually happened. There being a couple hundred casualties doesn’t make the event a ‘massacre’ and honestly I think you know this. Given that you haven’t defended the term but have only complained about discrepancies in first-hand accounting makes me think you know it’s an indefensible description.
Oh look, you did the thing QuietCupcake was pointing out you were doing right after he pointed it out
‘I’m just trying to get answers so I can understand.’ Bullshit. You’re farming for vague details so that you can dismiss the broader point being made and keep your a-historical and politically-motivated description that was suggested to you from decades of red-scare propaganda.
So why weren’t those linked? Why do I need to read 5 articles that say there was a massacre, just around the square and not in it, written by or about people who were actually there, just to get to a blog post that links those same articles and selectively pulls quotes to try and convince me that there wasn’t a massacre?
If January 6th ended with the federal government sending in tanks and hundreds dead, but everything else about it stayed about the same, I would still call it a massacre, or at the very least understand why others would.
And you ignored the second point I made, that we really can’t know too many details about what happened. And yet everyone’s so certain they know the full story, and it just so happens to align with what the government is[n’t] saying.
After having read the articles, I’m more convinced now that a massacre did happen, it just wasn’t in the square and mostly didn’t involve students. Yet everyone here seems to want to say that there was no massacre at all, it was a government declaring martial law and putting down a violent rebellion with overwhelming force. I’m not sure that’s much better, but whatever.
I’m just saying it wasn’t the massacre of wholesome pro democracy protesters like every lib assumes. There were actual skirmishes outside the square but there were people actually murdering police and shit. There are more than enough sources in this thread for you to do your own investigation. As Mao said, no investigation, no right to speak.
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?
They fucking burned people alive dude that is why the military went in.
Cool, so the unruly mob was burning cops/military alive, and that’s why they needed to send in the military.
try THAT in a small town
You’re not very good at this
Alright, then who was being burned alive? Because I was under the impression it was the military/police. Nakoichi is saying that they burned people alive and that’s why the military was sent in, but it was the military being burned alive, meaning they were already there.
China did not have specialized riot police at the time, it flatout wasn’t ever necessary. The PLA was the only force existing with the manpower and equipment to handle the situation.
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)
How is an unarmed person violence? Genuinely, what violence were they engaging in if a bunch of liberal students burned them alive without dying? Look up the pictures, watch the videos, Chinese police are very different than the ones we (assuming you’re in a country that’s any degree of westernized) are used to. Think the old times type of dude with bright sticks directing traffic.
Cops under capital =/= peace officers under socialism. I very much wish a terrible fate to American cops while also recognizing that that isn’t the same thing as a cop protecting the revolution. We are capable of nuance here.
Furthermore, even if I were to concede the “the presence of authority is violence” point (side note, are you a libertarian? Not trying to dunk, just wish to understand where you are coming from) the first violence was from the protestors (who were led by a woman that straight up said she wanted people to die for propaganda purposes, it’s on video, it’s on YouTube). 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.
Oh, and do you know what the inciting incident was? The initial core of the student movement was opposing liberalization. The protest hijacked by the anti communist mentioned above (who fled to America btw, wanted her followers to die for cynical reasons yet considered herself too important).
Because that person is a cop or military member ordered there by the state specifically to oppose a protest.
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.
Honestly, that’s not the vibe I’m getting.
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?
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.
Yo, I’m not trying to doge but drunk af rn. Mid if we reconvene tomorrow?
Ayyy it’s my weekend and I spent the last two nights getting plastered at karaoke night