Hello, a bit ago there was a post somewhere, I think it was on .ML and it caused a discussion of the square and I believe @Cowbee@hexbear.net and someone else had a bunch of resources on it.
I was wondering if they or someone else has any? I’ve been talking to people about it annnnd its been a bit rough and for some reason I didn’t save those resources. I’m kicking myself on that cause it was perfect.
Any help would be appreciated.
(I didn’t put this on .ml cause I didn’t want deal with .world right now ><)
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The uncensored version of the video that @miz@hexbear.net posted is up on Tankie Tube
Thank you!
If you want immediate footage of the Square being cleared out and direct interviews with student and labor activists on the square, uh, we have
In fact, in a twitter thread, anti-gov’t activists like Hou Dejian agreed on that too
All this to say, little, if not none of the casualties, and no deaths, were in Tiananmen Square itself.
Now if you’d like to specify the broader June 4th incident or 6 4 incident in Beijing, as it’s usually called in China (六四事件 or Liù Sì Shìjiàn), I’d oblige
If you have the information quick at hand I wouldn’t say no
Ok, besides that, let’s talk about casualties outside of the square, the proper June 4th incident in Beijing, or just June incident in Beijing since it spanned over many days.
Edited:
Excerpts from Looking Back At Tiananmen Square, the defeat of counterrevolution in China
The actual situation was very different. Between June 1st and June 4th there was a rising tide of violence in Beijing. Although the “democracy movement” had lost some of its steam, there was still a situation of dual power within the city. While the Party did everything possible to resolve the conflict peacefully, they had no intention of handing over the city to the forces of liberalization or Zhao. Nor did the Party intend to allow the crisis to drag on until the scheduled opening of the National People’s Congress on June 20, which the students had voted to continue their occupation of the square until. On June 1st, the Public Security Bureau detained some of the leaders of the Autonomous Workers Union. As a result, the offices of the Beijing Municipal Pubic Security Bureau and the Municipal Party Committee and government were surrounded, and some assaults were made on them.
On the night of June 2nd, a police jeep on loan to Chinese Central TV was involved in a traffic accident in which three people died. According to the New York Times “word quickly spread that the police had run down and killed four citizens,” and because many people believed the rumors that this traffic accident was a part of some kind of military maneuver the situation in Beijing became much more tense. The Toronto Globe and Mail reports that at the time of the accident “thousands of foot soldiers, mostly unarmed and in civilian clothes, were jogging into the city. They were supposed to enter undetected, surround the square and peacefully persuade the students to leave. But the crowds engulfed the soldiers. Some chased them until the soldiers broke rank.” A column approaching from the opposite direction also ran into opposition. Military vehicles were overturned and soldiers were searched for weapons.
On the morning of June 3rd more attacks were made on military vehicles. Reporters for Time magazine stated, “By 7 a.m. though, students and young workers outside Zhongnanhai were smashing their way into two military buses filled with light machine guns and crates of ammunition…” “As for isolated pockets of troops hemmed in at intersections and overpasses around the city, the crowd was not in a mood to merely lecture them. In some places, the troops were stripped almost naked, chased or struck by angry citizens. Other injured troops had difficulty getting to hospitals as mobs deflated or slashed the tires of military ambulances.”
There is a point to going through these accounts from the press; that troops were being disarmed, military vehicles were being attacked, and soldiers were being beaten long before the PLA resorted to counter-violence. It should be understood that these weren’t riot control police. They were not carrying nightsticks. Some carried guns and others didn’t. When the bourgeois liberals incited people, they were inviting tragedy.
The charges made by some forces in the pro-“democracy” movement, that the government purposely allowed arms to fall into the hands of students, is by its very nature very difficult to determine the truth of. For example the student leaders claim that they tried to give 27 rifles taken from soldiers to a military commander but he refused to accept them. Another student leader claims that they returned 2 busloads of arms and they still have the receipt. As for the armored personnel carrier — well it was put in their hands by a “suspicious” character.
Later in the day, several incidents would occur which would greatly exacerbate the situation. The first was when a crowd of people seized a vehicle loaded with arms and security forces waged an intense battle with them. Although no one was killed, there were some injuries sustained by the rioters. A short time later, the western press reports that a number of government buildings were attacked and their guards injured. About 1000 people entered a construction site and seized iron bars, tools, bricks and anything else which could be used as weapons. According to the official report it was at this juncture that broadcasts were made in the square urging the “overthrow of the government.” By now the situation in Beijing was completely out of control.
The decision was made to bring in the troops which remained outside Beijing. At 6:30 on the night of June 3, the announcement was made around Beijing that people should remain in their neighborhoods and stay away from Tiananmen Square. The Toronto Globe and Mail describes what happened: “The next night [June 3] the government decided to bring in tanks, which also meshed with its plans to dispose of Zhao. Still there was to be no shooting of civilians. Chinese sources said President Yang Shangkun issued a secret order saying soldiers could use any measures except firing their guns to clear the square.”
Sometime, late in the evening of June 3, the soldiers did begin to fire their weapons, and fought their way to Tiananmen Square. Both soldiers and civilians were killed. Of the civilians killed, some were rioters and others were hit by stray bullets. It is possible that some of the gunfire from the troops was indiscriminate. It is also possible that some civilians were killed by other civilians with firearms, for example after rioters snatched an armored personnel carrier, they decided to try out its machine gun.
I initially read about this in Atrocity Fabrications and Its Consequences, but I think the above is a better source for how the violence escalated
But I’d like to more focus on scale
There’s also from the state organs, translated from Mango Press, Report On Stopping Unrest and Quelling Counter Revolutionary Riots (30 June 1989) which talks about the scale of the casualties,
According to some extra info from a CCTV documentary, shortly made in July 1989, the Test of Blood and Fire, even after riots were quashed in the capital
On the evening of June 6, a group of thugs set fire to train No. 161 from Beijing to Shanghai, causing a temporary disruption to the Shanghai-Nanjing and Shanghai-Hangzhou railway lines.
On June 7, a group of thugs overturned and set fire to a bus on the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, causing severe traffic congestion.
On the evening of June 5th, a small group of rioters burned down the Chengdu People’s Department Store.
[Deng Xiaoping] conferred the honorary title of “Guardian of the Republic” upon 10 martyrs: Liu Guogeng, Wang Qifu, Li Qiang, Du Huaiqing, Li Dongguo, Wang Xiaobing, Xu Rujun, Cui Guozheng, Ma Guoxuan, and Wang Jinwei.
Cui Guozheng, a martial law troop
Martyr Cui Guozheng was a soldier in an artillery company. In his two years of service, he received four awards for meritorious service.
Just as he was being ordered to Beijing to enforce martial law, he received a telegram that his father was critically ill.
Without being able to visit him, he resolutely went to Beijing with his unit and was brutally murdered by rioters during the mission.
Martyr Cui Guozheng was dragged onto the Chongwenmen pedestrian overpass by a group of thugs, thrown off, doused with gasoline, and burned alive.
It was on this very overpass that martyr Cui Guozheng gave his life at the young age of 21.
In the early hours of June 4th, Cui Guozheng was brutally beaten by a group of thugs, then fell from an overpass and was burned alive with gasoline. His body was then hanged from the overpass.
The thugs shouted that this was like lighting a sky lantern.
Cui Guozheng’s mother, Wen Guiqin, was visited, consoled and given condolences by Chinese leaders
Some of the thugs who murdered martyr Cui Guozheng have been arrested.
The perpetrators include: Zhao Yuetang, a farmer from Jingzhou, Hubei Province; Yang Shizeng, a former worker at a hospital in Chongwen District; and Li Weidong, an unemployed man relying on government aid, once previously detained by the police.
They, along with other thugs, burned Cui Guozheng alive.
Other sources besides the documentary include: https://baike.baidu.com/item/崔国政/55952550?fr=aladdin
Liu Guogeng, a martial law troop
On the morning of June 4th, after arriving at the troop assembly point, Liu Guogeng volunteered to rescue a vehicle carrying radios, weapons, and ammunition that was besieged near Liubukou.
He was severely beaten with bricks, stones, and iron bars by thugs and then doused with gasoline and burned.
After martyr Liu Guogeng was beaten to death by rioters, he was disemboweled, his eyes gouged out, and his body hanged on a burning bus.
Liu Guogeng, only 25 years old, heroically sacrificed his life in the flames.
Martyr Liu Guogeng was a second lieutenant platoon leader in a martial law unit, from Laiyang City, Shandong Province.
Last year, his platoon was awarded a collective third-class merit.
Before going to Beijing, he was on leave at home preparing for his wedding.
Upon hearing that the army was to carry out a mission, he voluntarily returned to his unit and requested to join the martial law troops. He came to Beijing and dedicated his youth to quelling the riots.
The Chongwenmen pedestrian overpass was piled high with wreaths laid by the people.
Liu Guogeng’s father, Liu Zhirong, was also visited, consoled and given condolences by Chinese leaders
[After this,] Liu Guogeng’s younger sister, Liu Huichun, also honorably enlisted. [Following after his military/police example]
Zhang Jianzhong and Meng Duo, the thugs who persecuted martyrs Liu Guogeng and Li Guorui, have also been brought to justice.
Other sources besides the documentary include: https://baike.baidu.com/item/刘国庚/55909512?fr=aladdin
Ma Guoxuan, a martial law troop
Wang Qifu, Li Dongguo, Du Huaiqing, Li Qiang, Wang Xiaobing, and Xu Rujun (martial law troops)
The Cuiwei Road intersection, a military vehicle overturned after its tires were punctured by nails planted by criminals.
Still in the early hours of June 4th, a group of thugs launched a violent attack at the Cuiwei Road intersection on ten soldiers from an artillery brigade of the martial law troops who were on their way to Tiananmen Square to carry out a clearing operation.
The thugs punctured the tires of the vehicle carrying the soldiers, causing it to overturn on the roadside.
Then they threw incendiary devices onto the vehicle, which was engulfed in flames.
The rioters detonated the fuel tank on the vehicle, and the six soldiers on board were burned alive.
Six soldiers heroically sacrificed their lives.
Their relatives was also visited, consoled and given condolences by Chinese leaders
Additional sources, along with CCTV documentary above
Wang Qifu https://baike.baidu.com/item/王其富/55957699
Li Qiang https://baike.baidu.com/item/李强/55986321?fromModule=search-result_lemma
Du Huaiqing https://baike.baidu.com/item/杜怀庆/55957506?fromModule=disambiguation
Wang Xiaobing https://baike.baidu.com/item/王小兵/55986354?fromModule=disambiguation
Xu Rujun https://baike.baidu.com/item/徐如军?fromModule=lemma_search-box
somehow Li Dongguo wasn’t mentioned
Li Guorui, a police officer (not one of the 10 but also brutally killed)
On the railings of the Fuchengmen Overpass, crowds spontaneously laid elaborate wreaths to mourn Li Guorui, a martyr who died quelling a riot.
Li Guorui was a 20-year-old soldier in the First Battalion of a unit of the Beijing Armed Police Corps.
While on duty with his unit to enforce martial law, he was attacked and beaten by rioters while marching on foot after his military vehicle was burned, and became separated from his unit.
In the early morning of June 4th, he was tortured to death by a group of rioters while passing through the Fuchengmen Overpass.
After martyr Li Guorui was brutally murdered by rioters, his body was hanged on the railing of the Fuchengmen Overpass.
Li Guorui was a 20-year-old soldier in the First Battalion of a unit of the Beijing Armed Police Corps.
Li Guorui’s second elder brother, Li Guocheng, sends greetings to Chairman Deng and Chairman Yang, wishing them good health
Li Guorui’s elder brother, Li Guozhong, took up his brother’s rifle and became a proud armed police officer.
Zhang Jianzhong and Meng Duo, the thugs who persecuted martyrs Liu Guogeng and Li Guorui, have also been brought to justice.
Other sources besides this documentary include: https://baike.baidu.com/item/李国瑞/55986300?fr=aladdin
Thank you! I’m realizing this helps with some of the confusion I’ve had reading various people talk about this that I didn’t even know I had.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Thank you!
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Thank you!
I like Qiao Collectives Tian’anmen protests reading list! Works well for getting a comprehensive overview.
Thank you!
No problem!
did you search? I know the search isn’t great but there are several hexbear threads with a bunch of stuff. two of the better articles:
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The Tian’anmen Square ‘Massacre’: The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie | Mango Press
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Another View of Tiananmen | Red Sails
I honestly don’t know why I didn’t think to search so I apologize about that. Thank you for your help!
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https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/1989_Tian'anmen_Square_riots
Eta lemmygrad is a great place to ask questions like this.
Yeah I probably should make an account over there. I’ve just been burnt out on making new accounts for everything.
Thank you BTW!
You’re welcome!
I thought hexbear accounts can already post there? If not, DM a mod or admin about access with your current account.
Oh maybe! Honestly I have a hard time understanding Lemmy and decentralized socials. So that’s probably the case.
I’m not really sure, because I’m fuzzy on it too! Comrades in fuzz! 🫡
I think it was a different one but this is still useful. Thank you.
Oh interesting I think this might of been one of them but the post was recent. So it might of been someone linking to this. Thank you!
Thank you!
The evidence of massacre is pretty widespread with independent witnesses.
We got the story generally right, but on one detail I and others conveyed the wrong impression. There was no massacre on Tiananmen Square.
Reporting that tanks were running over students in Tiananmen square and then walking that back and saying “Actually, it was on the outskirts and no one reporter saw everything but we are pretty sure that…” gives me impression that the reports weren’t very accurate.
Here is the author of that piece:
James Miles is now the Beijing correspondent of The Economist, and author of The Legacy of Tiananmen: China in Disarray (University of Michigan Press, 1996).
Yeah, technically, it didn’t happen on Tiananmen Square, which was evacuated relatively peacefully, but outside in the rest of Beijing, such as in Muxide or Xidan, there was killing
Here is a video made by a Chinese man who was living in china at the time. The video includes an interview with one of the organisers openly talking about how she didn’t want to admit to the protestors that the aim of the movement was to incite violence (including by the crucifixion, burning alive, and other violent murder of soldiers carried out by protesters, which is well evidenced but not widely reported in the west). Yes, there was violence. There was a faction of protestors advocating the violent overthrow of the government, and carrying out actual violence to try and achieve it. What else is going to happen under those circumstances?
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
That’s consistent with what Chinese authorities say. But reporters who got a pretty basic major fact wrong always go on to say claim that thousands could have died. Reports at the time also failed to mention barricades set up and Molotov’s being thrown, or protest leaders being transported to the west by the CIA.
The image everyone in the west was given by reporters was that students were peacefully protesting and solders came in and shot them and drove tanks over them and killed up to 10,000 people.
How many deaths though because i bet we could total up a very comparable number just from a handful of the hundreds of incidents associated with labor disputes just in 1880-1950s america but strangely you don’t hear the u.s. harping over that
To be clear, I’m in the camp of the June 4th Incident being wildly overblown, but this isn’t that good of an argument to point to a 70 year history and say “well, more people died in just a bit of this than died on one night in the immediate aftermath of a huge rally in the capitol of the world’s most populous country.”
According to China, 241 people died including 23 security personnel*, though I think a few people died somewhat later for reasons related to getting caught in the crossfire, and they aren’t counted in this number. The PRC says 36 college students were killed, but I don’t know if it has elaborated at all on if that means those 36 were strictly civilian and the degree to which they claim the remaining 182 weren’t. I think its lack of transparency on this issue is understandable but a tactical error if one believes they are being honest.
*Like half of the personnel deaths were seemingly from a single catastrophic accident where a bunch of people were stuck inside an armored truck that caught fire (not lit on fire by insurgents, despite them immolating at least two PLA soldiers before that point).I was extremely wrong here, see below.*Like half of the personnel deaths were seemingly from a single catastrophic accident where a bunch of people were stuck inside an armored truck that caught fire (not lit on fire by insurgents, despite them immolating at least two PLA soldiers before that point).
How do you know that exactly they didn’t flame them in there? From what I heard of that, the CCTV documentary told me they used tire puncturing traps, like they had before, to overturn the vehicle and then threw incendiary devices at them…
Sorry if I sounded like I was taking too authoritative a tone, I did look up the numbers but the truck part was from memory. I am looking it up now and it was absolutely an attack. I assume the CCTV documentary is in one of the many links in this thread, but could you point me to it so I can learn more?
Edit: I see your post with the doc. Thanks for posting it!
Specifically, the part about the military deaths of 10, including the 6 who were burnt in that truck, they were in Episodes 2, 3 and 4, beyond the 54 minutes into the documentary.
There, you will find them (CW: gory images of the dead), but just start at Episode 2, in the middle of it, around 0:54:00 to 1:20:00, and you will find info, if you saw my post about the documentary.
To compare, there was Gwangju Uprising against the ROK dictatorship of Chun Doo Hwan, which caused AT MINIMUM 26 troops and cops dead (at least half were friendly fire) and 165-241 dead civilians and rebels, never mind other examples in Another View of Tiananmen of other incidents akin to it and contemporary
Here is the author of that piece:
James Miles is now the Beijing correspondent of The Economist, and author of The Legacy of Tiananmen: China in Disarray (University of Michigan Press, 1996).Every time. They’ll share an article with a title like “Indisputable proof of the insidious Chinese brutally massacring innocents by the millions!” and then the actual article is like “Well, our reporters saw that the violence wasn’t one sided and ultimately there was far less bloodshed than we claim, but they were probably just so shocked by all the violence that their brains couldn’t process it. So don’t believe any of the eyewitness accounts and just believe us.”
and then the author is always someone like “Anglo “HitlerHeil” Jones, senior fellow at the American Burger Eagle institute for the destruction and defamation of China.”
I’d like to look at this, but I can’t open it and I tried archiving it but the archive site didn’t display it. idk why, I’m very bad with computers.
