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."

Comments

Re:No big secret here

[brit74]

> "Everything I've ever read about it was that students were run over by tanks, inside the square."
I don't remember the "run over by tanks" part, although I do remember a man standing in front of the tanks, not getting run over.

Re:No big secret here

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0604.html

When troops finally seized Tiananmen Square early Sunday morning, they allowed the student occupiers who held on to the center of the square for three weeks to leave and then sent tanks to run over the tents and makeshift encampment that demonstrators had set up. Unconfirmed reports rapidly spread that some students had remained in the tents and were crushed to death.

No, Nicholas Kristof just included "unconfirmed reports" in his coverage and let the reader draw his own conclusion.

Re:No big secret here

[houghi]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4313282.stm
At the top of the square just in front of the Forbidden City, an APC got separated from its column, and in its panic to get out of the crowd area, ran over several demonstrators. This, in turn, caused the crowd to grow violent.

Yes, technicaly an APC is not a tank. So we look further.

At about four or five in the morning, tank columns raced into the square smashing buses, bicycles and humans under their treads.

Clearly talking about tanks and not an accident.

You can decide for yourself the quality of said source. His name is Charlie Cole and he is the winner of the 1989 World Press Photo of a man standing in front of a tank in China. The URL above tells what happened that day. Sounds like a pretty good quality source to me.

Re:Not inside the square.

[taiwanjohn]

> 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.

Re:No big secret here

[mangu]

The tanks may not have run over him, would be very bad propaganda because foreign reporters were filming from hotel windows. however no one ever knew what became of that man, not even his identity has been divulged.

Re:No big secret here

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

A lot of Americans live withing walking distance and have relatively unrestricted access to the press and the court system. DC has one of the highest lawyer-per-capita populations in the world. You can't walk ten feet without tripping over an NGO. If anyone tried to cover up something that big, a lot of those people would work very hard to prevent it--and they have media connections and strong grassroots networks.