China keeps peddling lies about Tiananmen massacre
No one knows how many died. In 2017, it was reported that at least 10,000 protesters were killed
It was brutal. It was barbaric. Thirty-seven years ago, the gray men running the Communist Party of China ordered a military crackdown on the student-led pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Connecting streets ran red with blood.
Before the tanks rolled in, crowds of up to 100,000 bathed in the shadows of the Great Hall of the People. The movement quickly galvanized a country aching for change in 1989. Demonstrations spread to 400 Chinese cities.
They included major urban and industrial centers, such as Shanghai, Nanjing, Xi’an, Changsha, and Chengdu. Millions of fellow students, workers, and intellectuals joined the nationwide call for “freedom of speech” and “political accountability.”
The response from Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping was to send in the People’s Liberation Army to crush the people, literally. No one knows how many died. In 2017, it was reported that at least 10,000 protesters were killed. Previous estimates ranged from hundreds to 1,000.
The Chinese authorities must be held accountable.
Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International
Yet, the cables from the then-British ambassador to China, Sir Alan Donald, graphically described the unfolding horror. “Students linked arms but were mown down … armored personnel carriers then ran over bodies … the remains collected by bulldozer,” he wrote.
“[What was left was] incinerated and then hosed down drains … Four wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted,” Sir Alan added, citing a source close to a member of China’s State Council at the time.
The big lie:
- A report by the China Aerospace Studies Institute has also illustrated the depth to which the Communist Party will sink. Flipping “the script” became the narrative.
- “The protesters are not only labeled ‘counter-revolutionaries,’ now they are ‘terrorists.’ It was the PLA soldiers who ‘sacrificed’ to save the country,” the case study pointed out.
Delve deeper: Human rights groups have again railed against China’s disinformation campaign. “By burying the past, the Chinese government is also burying respect for fundamental rights in the future,” Yalkun Uluyol, of Human Rights Watch, said.
Between the lines: His views were echoed by Amnesty International’s Sarah Brooks. “The Chinese authorities must be held accountable for the grave human rights violations perpetrated on 4 June 1989,” she said.
Big picture: “Families must be allowed to commemorate those killed 37 years ago simply for exercising their right to protest,” she added, referring to a ban on relatives visiting the graves of some of those killed in the massacre.
China Factor comment: Since the shame of Tiananmen Square, the country has become an economic and military superpower, and a human rights outcast.