AS COLUMNS of tanks and tens of thousands of soldiers approached Tiananmen, many troops were set on by angry mobs... dozens of soldiers were pulled from trucks, severely beaten and left for dead.
At an intersection west of the square, the body of a young soldier, who had been beaten to death, was stripped naked and hung from the side of a bus. Another soldier’s corpse was strung at an intersection east of the square.” [1]
“Radicalised protesters, some now armed with guns, and vehicles commandeered in clashes with the military.” [2]
“Other scenes show soldiers’ corpses and demonstrators stripping automatic rifles off unresisting soldiers.” [2]
These accounts are taken, not from the official version of the Chinese government, but from the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal in the immediate aftermath of the events of 4 June 1989.
As the US, its allies, and cheerleaders in the media step up their campaign of anti-communist and Sinophobic rhetoric in the ongoing Cold War against China, we can expect to hear an altogether different, if more familiar, narrative this week, about the “massacre” of thousands of innocent students in a “brutal authoritarian crackdown” this week.
The “events” in fact began two months earlier in April, when students gathered, somewhat ironically, to mourn and commemorate the passing of a senior Communist Party leader, Hu Yaobang, later joined by workers, again ironically, concerned by the inflationary effects of market-liberalising economic reforms.
Beijing’s iconic central square, and much of the city, was all but paralysed for weeks. Following lengthy but failed attempts at a negotiated settlement between the government and student leaders (presenting disparate and undefined demands) and no end in sight to the paralysis of the capital, the authorities eventually ordered the peaceful dispersal of the crowds from the square, which was largely achieved by June 3.
Individual accounts of army snipers and soldiers gunning down fleeing students have been discredited both by a far greater number of eyewitnesses contradicting it, including US journalists (such as the Washington Post’s Jay Matthews), and television footage of an orderly dispersal [3]. Spanish television network TVE had a camera crew on the square covering events, and reported no evidence of a massacre [4].
No doubt the image of the infamous “tank man” has sprung to your mind; it is well worth watching the footage to the end: the outcome might surprise you!
When soldiers, unarmed, originally entered the square to begin the dispersal, they were set upon by groups of coordinated and armed protesters that remained, as was openly reported on at the time. Many dozens of soldiers are known to have been killed, as grisly images of lynched and burned soldiers from the events attest.
Much of the subsequent violence occurred following the dispersal, between June 4-5, and took place elsewhere across the city, rather than on the square itself. The violence can accurately be described as clashes between armed protesters and soldiers, not a massacre of unarmed civilians on the Square.
Of course, it wasn’t long before the US propaganda machine churned out an altogether different story, with media pundits, who hadn’t even been there, regaling unverified accounts of “thousands” of deaths.
“Two thousand six hundred” was the go-to figure for some time, before evolving into “several” thousand, then “8,000.” Most present-day accounts are happy to settle on “tens of thousands.” The figures are conspicuous in their ambiguity alone.
Numerous editorial corrections were made in the initial weeks following the events, as the fog cleared; diplomatic cables confirmed the chronology of events, and on-the-ground reports (see above) presented an altogether different picture [5]. But the massacre narrative had been decidedly set.
It should come as no surprise that this co-ordinated propaganda campaign took place concurrently with the fall of socialism across central and eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The US, then as now, remains committed to undermining and destroying Chinese socialism, and has relied heavily upon thinly veiled, CIA-sponsored bodies like Radio Free Asia, National Endowment for Democracy, and the fanatical anti-communist and fantasist Adrian Zenz, with the sole objective of bringing about the fall and disintegration of China, much as happened to the former USSR and Yugoslavia.
Thirty-seven years on, it is time to ask: would the authorities in our “open democratic” society demonstrate such restraint in the face of a two-month-long protest, the paralysis of central London or Washington, or the subsequent death of several security personnel attempting to reassert control over the capital?
When exposed to the annual flurry of false narratives of the events of June 4 1989, do those telling it have any vested interest in concocting an unsubstantiated account, so utterly divorced from the actual reality?
References
[1] The Wall Street Journal, “Troops Open Fire in Beijing,” June 4, 1989.
[2] The Washington Post, “Chaos in the Streets of Beijing,” June 5, 1989.
[3] Matthews, J. (1998). “The Myth of Tiananmen,” The Columbia Journalism Review.
[4] TVE (Televisión Española), En Portada: Crónica de Tiananmen, broadcast June 1989.
[5] US Embassy Beijing, Diplomatic Cable: June 4 Events in Beijing, 1989 (Released via FOIA).
Naturally the west conveniently forgets about Kent state amongst others.
I remember seeing footage at the time, of a Chinese army column parked up. A long row of K63 armoured personnel carriers. One had a hole in the side from an RPG-7 (Type 69) hit.
Somebody fought back against the army for sure.