Tiananmen Square massacre

[dexter]

June 3, 1989 drastic measures in Tiananmen the Chinese Government instructs the army to retrieve at all costs from Tiananmen Square of Beijing, taken for seven weeks by students demanding democratic reforms.

On the evening of June 4, Chinese troops consisting of soldiers, tanks and artillery, had enough cleaned the square, killing hundreds of people and arresting thousands of protesters and suspected of dissent. The Tiananmen Square protests began in mid-April, after the death of Hu Yaobang, leading Chinese advocate of reforms. Mourning for Hu students ended up in Tiananment and initiated a spontaneous demonstration demanding democratic reforms. In may, almost a million people filled the square. When the army was called upon to break up the protests, demonstrators blocked their March, bringing tension to its maximum extent with drastic and totalitarian repression measures.

A group of journalists at the pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square, May 17, 1989.

VIDEO: What happened in Tiananmen Square? Explained in 60 seconds.

After weeks of protests in Tiananmen Square, the authorities responded on 3-4 June 1989: Hundreds died in the streets of Beijing as the army cleared demonstrators from the square.
Here's a quick look at what happened.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153387890872588

 

[OCguy]

Hopefully Chinese citizens can access this history.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Hopefully Chinese citizens can access this history.

If you're talking about me, then yes. I've been reading about this event since I was a kid.

One of the darkest periods in recent Chinese history, alongside the Cultural revolution.

It shows the need for internal stability and reform.

China needs to continue on the path of economic growth for the next 10-20 years at the very least.

 

[UKBengali]

If the students succeeded than China never would not have succeeded like it has done.

The time for democracy is after you have industrialised.

 

[MM_Haider]

If the students succeeded than China never would not have succeeded like it has done.

The time for democracy is after you have industrialised.

this is your justification for massacre?

 

[Jlaw]

this is your justification for massacre?

M. Haider, I would not call it a massacre as i have been following this since i was a kid also. The western media was so hoping for a regime change and put China back another 20years. The government did the right thing as history shows.
It is a lesson for all wannabe future emperors. Failure means death.

 

[MM_Haider]

M. Haider, I would not call it a massacre as i have been following this since i was a kid also. The western media was so hoping for a regime change and put China back another 20years. The government did the right thing as history shows.
It is a lesson for all wannabe future emperors. Failure means death.

May be you have different standards... even one innocent person's death is wrong! here hundreds were died and you won't call it a massacre... strange! how can a human be so cold blooded?

 

[Jlaw]

May be you have different standards... even one innocent person's death is wrong! here hundreds were died and you won't call it a massacre... strange! how can a human be so cold blooded?

Like I said, if you want to be emperor make sure you win or end up with your head on the ground. This being said, after '89 China's economy grew double digit for the next decade, became the second largest economy and major player.
Had the students won, China will be a colony of the west, with a government more cowardly than KMT.

To me, the end justifies the mean when a nation's sovereignty is at stake.

 

[MM_Haider]

Like I said, if you want to be emperor make sure you win or end up with your head on the ground. This being said, after '89 China's economy grew double digit for the next decade, became the second largest economy and major player.
Had the students won, China will be a colony of the west, with a government more cowardly than KMT.

To me, the end justifies the mean when a nation's sovereignty is at stake.

You won't be saying these words if your son or brother was killed in this fiasco! You would have hated this system!..

 

[Jlaw]

You won't be saying these words if your son or brother was killed in this fiasco! You would have hated this system!..

If my brother want to be emperor he will know of the consequence should he fail. In fact I don't hate the system. It did a lot of good for ordinary Chinese folks.

 

[MM_Haider]

If my brother want to be emperor he will know of the consequence should he fail. In fact I don't hate the system. It did a lot of good for ordinary Chinese folks.

even if they were whatever you say, it is not a justification for killing them.. tear gas, imprisonment, rubber bullets, water cannon... there are so many other options available.

 

[Jlaw]

even if they were whatever you say, it is not a justification for killing them.. tear gas, imprisonment, rubber bullets, water cannon... there are so many other options available.

In fact the government was too soft on the students. The only option is death for failed uprising. Unfortunately the student heads got away thanks to foreign intervention and living a good life abroad and became obese.

 

[Solomon2]

Burying Tiananmen And Flushing It Away

January 24, 2018: In late 2017 Britain declassified data its diplomats and intelligence agencies collected on what went on in June 1989 when the Chinese military savagely suppressed the main (and most reported on by world media) pro-democracy demonstration in China. All this took place in Beijing, the capital, in Tiananmen Square. The British collected numerous eye-witness accounts of the massacre itself, including the use of troops who were largely illiterate and known to be particularly loyal to the communist government. The Chinese government went to extreme lengths to suppress any data on how many actually died. The officialnumber was 300 while Chinese Red Cross initially released estimates of 2,700 dead but later withdrew that. It turned out that during the massacre Chinese ambulances and other medical personnel were turned away and some of those who got through and did not leave quickly enough were massacred as well.

The British estimate agreed with the Americanintelligence estimate (over 10,000 dead and 40,000 wounded) that was released in 2014. The British data indicates the number of dead was somewhat higher and Chinese officials who spoke to British diplomatic personnel indicated that the government was not seeking an official number, even if highly classified but the number regularly used by Chinese officials was “at least 10,000.”) The Chinese sources are reliable but will never be named by the Brits, something they are good at keeping secret.

The British released a lot of details on how the attack was carried out, including the use of promises (quickly broken) to allow demonstrators (including survivors of the first round of killing) to leave. The troops apparently had orders to kill all civilians in the square and destroy the bodies where they fell. This included crushing the dead using armored vehicles, burning those remains and flushing those remains down storm drains. The area was sealed off for over a month so the cleanup could be thorough.

After the June 4 massacre the Chinese government enacted a growing number of measures to erase the June 1989 demonstrations (there were over 400 different demonstrations across the country with millions of Chinese participating) from popular memory. Martial law was imposed on the capital until 1990 to make it easier to hunt down survivors and terrorize anyone inclined to discuss the massacre.

The censorship effort continues. A good example occurred in 2015 when Hong Kong was the scene of over 100,000 people gathering to commemorate the 26th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Hong Kong residents have more freedoms because of a 1990s deal with Britain to leave their prosperous colony intact. Thus Chinese in Hong Kong never forgot Tiananmen. This spontaneous uprising scared Chinese officials a great deal as they saw it as potentially a Chinese version of the 1989 collapse of communist rule in East Europe that occurred by the end of 1989. Every year at this time Chinese Internet censors are noticeably more active in a continuing effort to keep any news of the 1989 uprising from the Chinese public. Any discussion of the savage crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators has been banned since 1989. The government effort has been successful at keeping most Chinese from knowing the details, or caring much about it. However many Chinese are aware that something happened. There are so many nasty aspects of Chinese history that Chinese are dimly aware of but not particularly curious about. In China there is a lot to forget and good reasons for doing so.

 

[denel]

Remember that Chinese govt does not even acknowledge this.

 

[vostok]

If Chinese authorities have not crushed the orange "revolution" in the bud, then China would suffer the fate of the USSR - destruction of the country and death of millions of people.
It was cruel, but it prevented the death of much larger number of people.