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Wikileaks Cables Say No Bloodshed Inside Tiananmen Square

Posted by timothy on from the bloodshed-all-confined-to-freedom-square dept.

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."

5 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. No big secret here by Senes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They waited until people were located outside the square itself before the slaughter began.

    1. Re:No big secret here by poity · · Score: 5, Insightful

      First of all this news in no way lightens the cruel brutality through which the PRC government dealt with their citizens that day, but I want to make a point on a possible explanation for the "tanks crushing people" claim. I'm not saying it's false, since we'll never know the truth having not been there, but consider this: The Chinese word for "suppress" is "ya", which is the same exact word for "to physically crush underneath" -- to put suppress an idea or to crush grapes underfoot for juice, it's the same word. So the phrase "they're using tanks to suppress people in the square" and "they're using tanks to physically crush people in the square" are the same in Chinese. Perhaps the real meaning was lost in the moment, then even more so in translation.

      --
      your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
    2. Re:No big secret here by houghi · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    3. Re:No big secret here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I was working for CTV news in Toronto at the time and I saw the raw footage of a protester getting run over by a tank and squashed like a bug. It's not something you forget. The footage was edited down to make it look like the tank had stopped, which it did, hesitating for a few seconds.

      Two weeks later we were visited by the Chinese head of media and they were given a full tour of the facility.

  2. Re:Osama by Seumas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To be fair, my average fellow American didn't stick around to listen long enough to updated reports. At "Osama was killed", they spent the next week flopping their dicks in the air and smashing beer cans on their heads while running around in public with giant foam fingers chanting "USA USA USA" like retards.