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Wikileaks Cables Say No Bloodshed Inside Tiananmen Square
netchaos writes "Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square when China put down student pro-democracy demonstrations 22 years ago." Which is not to say that everything was flowers and wine: "Instead, the cables show that Chinese soldiers opened fire on protesters outside the centre of Beijing, as they fought their way towards the square from the west of the city."
They waited until people were located outside the square itself before the slaughter began.
That's no news is it?
I head this in high school history (mid 90's).
there was no bloodshed inside the square, the bloodshed happened around the square. but it's called the tiananmen square massacre, because that was the focal point of the conflict. duh
furthermore, there never was any contention about what happened and where. this "shocking discovery" is mundane fact universally understood and agreed upon by anyone who has seriously looked at the massacre, or actually been there
so to post this cable, as if it is shocking to discover that which has always been known, has the appearance of a cover up or a smear against china, in the eyes of your average idiot reading this post who's knows nothing about tiananmen square
so why post this ignorant crap? there's no discovery in this "secret cable". there is only a factoid which agrees with what everyone has known about the massacre since day 1
this is fucking pathetic of you slashdot, to pass this on. you are spreading ignorance. watch all the fucking conspiracy morons get in a tizzy that this proves some hollywood style line of thought. pathetic. and you support morons by posting this "shocking discovery" slashdot
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I just want to point out as these threads get started that everything is relative. There are fine lines between terrorists, rebels, rioters and demonstrators and typically that line is determined by the winners and which side you're on. So, before we deride the Chinese government we should remember the workers riots at the turn of the century in the U.S. where many were killed by authorities, or the race riots of the 60s, again where many died, the following war demonstrators where again authority put them down, the Chicago riots, the L.A. riots and all the other riots that we call riots because they were put down and we live here.
I'm not saying any of it is right or siding with any side but the Chinese authority protect that authority just like authority in any other country, including whichever one you happen to live in.
They've missed or misinterpreted so many other key developments. What makes anyone believe the American's have an accurate picture of developments in the square 22 years ago?
I don't think the main issue with Tiananmen Square was that there was bloodshed but instead it was the oppression of freedom of speech, which is something that most certainly DID happen.
If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
Highlights from TFA:
Tiananmen square protesters were not assaulted with live ammunition. They were allowed safe passage to exit the protest upon the arrival of the army after negotiations with martial law troops.
Instead, 3 miles west in a place called Muxidi, protesters were fired upon with live ammunition after exhausting other efforts of dispersal which were ineffective, other efforts include tear gas and rubber bullets.
The leak suggests that the death toll in the square itself was relatively low, contrary to common belief. However, it does not suggest what the death toll was for Muxidi.
Interestingly, it is suggested by an anonymous caller to a US consulate that a leader of a powerful labor party, Ni Zhifu, said that he would lead a worker strike that would cripple China if the protesters were not treated with more respect.
***What's not mentioned in the TFA that might be in the cables / leaks from wikileaks themselves, not sure, but I'd like to know:
Were protesters in the square treated better because of the threat made by Ni Zhifu? Was his threat real?
The protesters in Muxidi were acting as road blocks to prevent the army from reaching the square to stop the heart of the protest, so they seem to me like they don't deserve any worse treatment than those at the square. Were they victims of the unfortunate circumstance simply because covering up the violence committed against them was feasible where as the government / army thought they could not get away with the same at the square? What would be the death toll in Muxidi?
What exactly was negotiated between the protesters and the "martial law troops"? Was it simply that if they dispersed they would be allowed to return home? Were they all forced to be identify themselves with martial law troops upon exiting the square in order to avoid immediate punishment? Did leaders have to turn themselves over to military custody?
I feel like TFA, a "telegraph exclusive" really dropped the ball in providing meaningful coverage of the leaks, unless wikileaks themselves just don't have this information yet. Without answering any of my questions it just seems to boil down to: Tianenmen Square didn't happen how you were told, but people participating in the protest in a nearby area may have faced the massacre you heard about. If these protesters were indeed coordinating with the ones physically in the square, I would still consider them to be a part of the Tiananmen Square protests, and if they faced a massacre by roadblocking in Muxidi, then I still feel that the protest can be considered a massacre as a whole. So, it doesn't sit right with me when the only base the article tried to cover is that the massacre didn't happen where we thought it did.
It's worth knowing, but it's just not a complete article.
Remember when at first the news said that he had hostages, was armed, and the marines had to kill him, and then the truth slowly come out, still leaving the 1st impression?
...before we deride the Chinese government we should remember the workers riots at the turn of the century in the U.S. where many were killed by authorities...
By which you mean, the turn of the century before last .
My wife was in Tiananmen.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
But I don't think I see the point? Isn't it sort of like saying the Kent State victims were off-campus when they got shot to death?
A "factoid" is not a "small fact", its something that is incorrect, but repeated often enough that most assume its true.
As everyone has said, this was already known. You can see more here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/
much of the violence occurred in the night, so no one knows. I don't know why the telegraph is acting like there was some cover up. There is video explicitly showing the soldiers firing into a crowd of parents trying to come find their kids, every 15 minutes or so when the parents got up the courage to move in. There is also video of soldiers shooting a ambulance.
> What I remember is the video of a protester standing down a column of tanks inside the square.
Actually the "tank man" footage was shot from the Beijing Hotel, looking WSW down Changan E. Rd.. The vantage point is (IIRC) a few hundred yards east of the square.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
.. to believe that all data that is provided to the US government and the press is handed on to you as voter-in-the-street.
I thus note you're being pissed off, which is good. Now apply this knowledge to everything else you hear/see on the media, including but not limited to "the US economy is recovering"..
Not that China is whiter than white - only that it is probably just as dirty at government level as any other nation, including the US..
Lets take another event in history, the holocaust. Everyone knows Anne Frank but where did she die? Now lets assume that the average person answers Auschwitz. You would the argue, let it be. Since the horror of that place is well known it can't hurt in convincing people how horrible it was right by giving the millions a human face in the form of a young girl?
But there are evil people in this world who would use your convenient lie to cast doubt on everything. Holocaust deniers take any tiny little detail they can and manipulate it until it fits their twisted agenda.
The truth of the tianamen square masacre is that violence happened but not a mass killing on the square itself (the article says no bloodshed wrongly, no bloodshed means not a single drop of blood was shed) but rather outside it once the students had started to flee and afterwards as countless disappeared.
If the lie becomes truth then it can be disproven and with it ALL the facts brought into doubt. ONLY the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth can set you free.
Your feelings are dead on, the evil will use this to cast doubt on what happened but you can't fight their lies with more lies.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Since it's called the "Tiananmen Massacre" everybody assumes it happened in Tiananmen Square, when really this was just an easy shorthand, since it was a response to the Tiananmen Protest, which had been going on for several weeks by then.
I know several people who were there that night, and this "new revelation" is nothing new, as you said.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Yes, I meant to put 20th in between the and century. Thanks for clearing that up though, I'm sure it caused great confusion.
Also by 60s I meant 1960s.
The most confusing part for me is WHY NO JOURNALIST EVER STOOD UP and TOLD US WHAT'S ON THE NEWS WAS NOT WHAT HE SAW.
The US government and the media clearly knew what's going on, but decided to let the rumor go on (or even hyped it more) to benefit themselves as much as possible. It's sad that this has to be leaked from a source the US government has tried so hard to suppress, after more than 20 years.
...G...
pics or it didnt happen
"What we are actually hoping for is bloodshed, for the moment when the government has no choice but to brazenly butcher the people. Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes."
Student leader Chai Ling
As far as I remember the demonstration in Tiananmen square was
not for democracy, but for return to the classic communism
against the reforms that started after Mao's death.
BTW, this reforms proceed until today.
A similar event happened in Baghdad in 1978, when the Iraqi
soldiers didn't open fire against the students who wanted
a return to Sharia state, ayatollah Homeini returned to the country
from Paris, and the Shah ran away.
This is rubbish. Of course you can specify what kind of crushing it is in Chinese. The character ya alone is ambiguous, but by using it in a 2 character compound word (as most words are in Chinese) you can easily be more specific.
It's almost exactly the same as in English. You can have ambiguity or you can be specific.
There's a Chinese guy on Chinese /. right now writing "Ah, but in English they say 'They used tanks to crush the protestors', but in English 'crush' is vague. It could mean that the tanks physically squashed them, or that they used shells to fire on the protesters, or that their presence alone with police alongside was enough".
That should be amended to read "no bloodshed in the square, that we know of from here inside the embassy, except for what wasn't seen by the one real diplomat among the whole community."
The one thing that I find constant in accounts of massacres at the time they happen is that they get underestimated. Usually, first-hand accounts by the well-connected are based on observations from safe vantage points or from second-hand information. Also, if you spend a lot of time in a safe place, you end up being very careful to not overstate anything and sound alarmist, lest you are seen as panic-stricken or sensationalist.... or wrong.
So, in accounts of how regimes treat their victims, I tend to believe the more brutal accounts of what happened. It's hard to underestimate how cruel people can be toward eachother.
Here I am in Shanghai, nice and early Monday morning, reading /. about the Tiananmen square massacre on an open Internet connection in China - no VPN, no firewall, no blocking. The times they are a changin...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
What the hell is this, some kind of Chinese propaganda release? What the hell Slashdot? Put out another bullshit post like this, and I'm straight out deleting Slashdot from my bookmarks.
Please find it -- it doesn't seem to exist anywhere on earth. I remember watching it live on TV, but I don't remember seeing anyone get run over by a tank.
Since when does one eyewitness account of some diplomat (usually these are not the freedom fighter types, to put it mildly) "show" anything?
I was in the Cannon House office building in Washington DC about 10 years ago when they had an exhibit of declassified photos from Tienanmen square on display in the lobby. The images were shocking and very bloody, far worse than anything i remembered being broadcast on tv as an adolescent.
Since when was Wikileaks the authorized source of truth? Eyewitnesses and journalists present at the massacre have stated that there was bloodshed at the Square. Why should I believe some anonymous Wikileaks document over other testimony? For example, Chinese-Canadian Journalist Jan Wong wrote about the incident in detail in her book "Red China Blues." Granted, she could have been lying, but give me a reason I should believe Wikileaks over her. A few sources: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/interviews/wong.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTWBDMen7bo
In a related leak, there was apparently no bloodshed at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco Texas.
A friends's company does business in China and many Chinese people claim the actual number is between 15,000-30,000 but nobody knows the exact number and never will. It seems the gov't made many people disappear after the main incident. Family and friends of "perps" were rounded up, never to be seen again.
With the current backlash against planking, it is clear that laying down in front of tanks will not be tolerated any more.
One of the things I remember about the events was the strong American accents of some of the protesters when they were interviewed in English by the western media. That and the makeshift sculpture which resembled the statue of liberty. The footage of tracer rounds flying through the air showed the bullets flying skywards at 45 degrees though the voice over talked of shooting into the crowds. The truth is that the western media is just as biased as any other and they lie to promote a view which they favour.
I am not a supporter of the corporate state which is China ( I love the way the capitalist press still likes to refer to it as communist to somehow put the blame on the left rather than the right) but I have no sympathy with journalists or politicians who lie or promote lies to achieve their ends.
Why is this even news? It's always been known that the "Lie by Truth" was that there was no blood shed in Tienanmen square. But everyone knows the violence happened in the side streets and around the rest of the city.
Puzzle Daze is now my job
I was in Tiananmen Square 6 months after the army rolled in on the Pro-Democracy protestors. The steps surrounding the monument were crushed in spots, presumably by tanks or some other heavy vehicle, and I remember seeing bullet holes in the monument itself. I went back around the anniversary, and they wouldn't let anyone into the square at all. A year later I went back a third time and everything was repaired. If those weren't bullet holes, what were they?
Not long after Tiananmen, we were inviting the Chinese to join the WTO and we were all happy trading with them. We have an embargo against Cuba but we see no reason to stop trading with China. The whole thing is ridiculous. When I saw the Chinese being invited to join the WTO and a lot of our companies investing there, I could not help but think that we failed all those protesters in the square. Let's be honest guys. We don't care about these protesters. We only care about whether we will be able to buy our next pair of snickers at a discount price. We trade with them so our dollars help finance a government that does this type of stuff. So who are we to judge?
BTW: Recently I went shopping for a new pair of snickers myself and I realized how hard it is to avoid buying stuff made in China. I always give preference to stuff that is not made in China but sometimes I cannot seem to find any other option.
This line of reasoning leads to saying that this is OK and we should accept it.
God dammit, I've never had to read a description letter by letter to understand it before.