Tiananmen Square: What happened in the protests of 1989?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-48445934

by zeristor • 7 years ago

275 124 7 years ago

bbc.co.uk

studentrob4• 7 years ago

I wonder to what degree the population is aware of the level of censorship that happens on the internet today.

07d046• 7 years ago

On that note, apparently Instagram in Laos is blocking "liking" posts related to Tiananmen Square.

I’m in Laos, a close ally of China, & whenever I “Like” a post on @instagram related to Tiananmen Square it comes up with a message saying “Action Blocked”. When I switch on my VPN it allow me to “Like” the images. I wonder if China provides internet infrastructure to Laos.

https://twitter.com/adamjdean/status/1135809731879088128

asveikau2• 7 years ago

This is a big deal if true. I can't imagine they did that without https or other encryption. It would have to be FB doing this.

studentrob4• 7 years ago

Laos is quite locked down, beyond the internet. You technically can't form a group (e.g. a book club) there without the government's consent, and it is very hard for NGOs to operate. I would not be surprised at any level of internet censorship there, except that Vientiane is within cell distance of Thailand, so maybe that forces them open a little.

Nasrudith• 7 years ago

Almost certainly aware of something certainly given the sheer clumbsiness like shutting down the stock market when the top numbers come up on numbers which are also coded references to Tinamen Square. You would probably be interested in this article of related weird bypasses and defiance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse

Mtinie3• 7 years ago

Aware there is censorship at all? From conversations with Chinese citizens living abroad whom I work with, they say the knowledge censorship is occurring is common, but as to understanding what types of information is being censored they only know in general terms.

Anecdotally, in China, the younger generations can’t get answers from the older generations who lived through these times because it’s verboten to speak of them. It leads to an (academically interesting) censorship feedback loop.

From my perspective it’s hard to know what you don’t know if the Powers-That-Be want to keep it a secret.

For example, here in the U.S. I assume we’re reasonably censorship-free, but by no means am I confident we have access to everything (excluding governmental information requiring clearances).

I do recognize our various media outlets play a major role in determining what the narrative is and which stories/reports/messages are raised to the level of societal recognition. I know people who consider this to be an indirect form of censorship.

NotPaidToPost• 7 years ago

Anecdotally, in China, the younger generations can’t get answers from the older generations who lived through these times because it’s verboten to speak of them.

Chinese speak very freely about all topics in private and with people they know.

est2• 7 years ago

censorship was rebranded as "battle against misinformation" these days.

Avalaxy• 7 years ago

Yea, not really. There is a difference between preventing people from spreading facts and preventing people from spreading blatant lies.

chapium• 7 years ago

to tell a lie

to hide a truth

mlang23• 7 years ago

Interesting staccato writing style. I wonder if the target audience of this article is actually non-english speaking people...

oconnor663• 7 years ago

Or maybe machine translation?

forgotmypwd123• 7 years ago

On the BBC? From what language, and why?

el_cujo• 7 years ago

I clicked on a couple of other articles from the side bar and they all seemed to have the same "skip line after ever sentence" style, but yeah this article does seem especially simplistic and would probably be easy to run through some translation software compared to some articles.

ChrisSD• 7 years ago

It's the BBC News web style to have relatively simple sentences, and each paragraph be made up of one sentence. The sentences do often become more complex further down an article.

Partly this was done so as to be readable on the old Ceefax and other mediums. But also so that it would be understandable by a wide audience.

CharlesColeman7• 7 years ago

> I wonder if the target audience of this article is actually non-english speaking people...
this article does seem especially simplistic and would probably be easy to run through some translation software compared to some articles.

Though, in this case, that's probably not necessary for the main non-English audience for this article. The BBC has a Chinese-language website (https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp).

Unfortunately they discontinued their Mandarin shortwave service (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-12864041), which is still probably the best technology to bypass censorship.

amiga_500• 7 years ago

This article has almost no information and must have taken less than 30 minutes to write.

educationdata• 7 years ago

One of the best songs for the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4PJVLTrjt0

I remember there was a youtube video with better quality, but I cannot find it any more.

peisistratos• 7 years ago

Actually some accounts have a lot of people protesting feeling the opposite - that the "capitalist roaders" had gone too far in laying off state enterprise workers. In other words supporters of what are described as "hardliners" supporting state industry. Obviously the few initial Hu Yaobang commemorators felt differently, but mass movements grow from wider interests. And obviously there was no mass movement as the protest failed.

I have to laugh at recent news reports of students being hassled in China. The students are trying to organize revolutionary unions and want a return to communism and Maoism. It is obvious the same Western newspapers tut-tuting the Maoist students being hassled would be fulminating if they took power and started moving back to the Maoist principles that they are espousing.

pjc502• 7 years ago

Tiananmen is an extraordinary achievement of forgetting.

There we a huge number of people involved on both the PLA and protestor sides. There are some reports which claim thousands of people killed and gruesomely disposed of; those people must have had relatives. We (outsiders and history in general) have very little idea what happened, and a single photo which escaped the censorship.

If the gunpoint forgetting is maintained for the lifetimes of the surviving participants, we may never know what happened.

Of course, even in incidents which are hugely documented, there is scope for denialists and propagandists to sneak in misinformation.

Edit: well, looks like there's lots more. I've been misled myself by how prevalent the Tank Man photo is compared to all the other footage!

cjslep• 7 years ago

We (outsiders and history in general) have very little idea what happened, and a single photo which escaped the censorship.

...what? We have more than a single photo of the Tiananmen Square incident! While in the article, have some archival BBC footage:

https://youtu.be/kMKvxJ-Js3A

nogridbag• 7 years ago

Here's another (NSFW):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA4iKSeijZI

Discussion on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bw8x9b/a_look_at_th...

cr1895• 7 years ago

a single photo which escaped the censorship.

It seems there's quite significant documentation, even documentaries with video of the event. Perhaps more is coming to light because it's the 30 year anniversary.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/world/asia/tiananmen-squa...

wodenokoto2• 7 years ago

A single photo? What are you talking about. There are plenty of video footage from the square where you can see the military shoot from cars into crowds of civilians[1].

We don’t have “very little idea what happened”.

Contemporary BBC news report: https://youtu.be/kMKvxJ-Js3A

bluntfang• 7 years ago

I really think you're underestimating the propaganda.

Kalium• 7 years ago

Tiananmen is an extraordinary achievement of forgetting.

It's only forgetting if you use the GDPR-compliant definition of the word that connotes force.

This is erasure. This is Orwell's memory hole in action. We know exactly what happened, and have plenty of evidence. But there is also a powerful government that would like us to think we're uncertain, unsure, lacking evidence or proof.

goblin89• 7 years ago

We know exactly what happened

We don’t know exactly. We don’t, specifically because of the erasure that you mentioned.

We argue with each other over the details of how people were killed and how bodies were disposed of. We’ll question the reliability of UK cable sources. In our never-ending quest for truth we’ll point out that the propaganda was likely coming from both sides.

That’s the point of it, eh? Ensure that the perpetrators, the dead, and those who fear for the lives of their families are mute. Let those who care do the work of ruining any truthful narrative. Present a very consistent narrative of your own.

It’s already gone from HN homepage, despite being posted 4 hours ago and having 230 points. (I know the algorithm is more complex than just time & points so I’m not blaming the mods.)

Cthulhu_• 7 years ago

Some other commenters point out how there is plenty of evidence and archival footage of the event, but that's all available here in the west - how much of that can be found in China itself? One of the major goals of the Chinese internet censorship is to hide all references to the event; I don't know how effective it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if the generations born afterwards don't know about it, and eventually (within China at least) it'll be lost entirely.

I mean the US likes to forget it had concentration camps for the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

kurthr• 7 years ago

Interesting, I was taught about Japanese internment in public high school.

rusk• 7 years ago

I mean the US likes to forget it had concentration camps for the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

I don’t think this is a fair comparison. some people are ignorant of this, or don’t want to know about it, but there isn’t any active state-sponsored campaign to suppress this. My own experience is that I was at an openly advertised exhibition in San Diego 20 years ago on this very topic and there wasn’t even a scintilla of fear that it could be the subject of any kind of censorship.

erentz• 7 years ago

I mean the US likes to forget it had concentration camps for the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

An odd comparison to make. It’s taught in public school and there are memorials to this at several locations including the national mall in Washington DC, and at least some of the locations are marked as national historic sites.

polotics• 7 years ago

The term "concentration camp" is very inappropriate here.

dragonwriter3• 7 years ago

I mean the US likes to forget it had concentration camps for the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

No, it doesn't. Not only is it part of public school curriculum in most (all?) states, it's actively cited by major party politicians as a historical reference in policy debates, usually negatively but at least as recently as the Bush II era occasionally positively by figures on the Right in defense of War on Terror policies.

vkou3• 7 years ago

The Waco or, on a much smaller scale, Ruby Ridge massacres are closer comparisons than internment.

And let me tell you - you won't hear two words about them in your high school social studies class.

cafard• 7 years ago

Perhaps the US would like to forget. But when we have a National Historic Site at one of the camps, we don't seem to be working very hard on the amnesia: https://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm . And some years ago, the book Snow Falling on Cedars sold quite a few copies, and there was a movie made of it.

plandis• 7 years ago

It was taught in school when I was growing up in Ohio in the 90s. The US government even paid reparations to those or decedents of those affected.

I think we can both agree, regardless, that we should be working towards improving our countries and that starts be being honest and calling out the bad thinks our countries do so as to have a hope of not repeating the same mistakes.

cr0sh• 7 years ago

I mean the US likes to forget it had concentration camps for the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

Yeah - my wife was mentioning such camps near here in Phoenix to one of her coworkers who's younger and they'd never been taught about them at school (here in Arizona!):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gila_River_War_Relocation_Cent...

https://saltriverstories.org/items/show/338

I think we have our own version of "forgetting" going on, but we call it "no child left behind" and "common core" and things like that. By this I mean it (and tons of other history and other topics) seem to fall by the wayside in favor of "higher scores on standardized testing" - not because of any concerted government effort or anything like that...

Note:

My wife knows about it because she loves Arizona history, in part because she went to school with and is a friend of our state historian's son (or grandson? can't remember), so she's heard lots of this state's history from "tales around the campfire", so to speak.

EDIT: Rethought my response; it seemed a bit trite or something. Wanted to clarify it.

scarmig4• 7 years ago

The idea that the USA has forgotten Japanese concentration camps is fairly out there.

Which is kind of sad, in that there are plenty of government-driven forgettings we have here. E.g. COINTELPRO. Even the history of slavery is subject to government-sponsored campaigns of mnemonological displacement (e.g. the Civil War was about states rights, not slavery!)

duxup• 7 years ago

And if not outright denied it is dismissed as "unhelpful" to talk about:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/opinion/tiananmen-square-...

wyldfire• 7 years ago

Tiananmen is an extraordinary achievement of forgetting.

Indeed, the book "The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited" [1] was mentioned recently on NPR's "Morning Edition" in the context of the anniversary of Tianenmen Square.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People%27s_Republic_of_Amn...

yumraj• 7 years ago

Perhaps the World should adopt this day as Tainenmen Square day, or World Democracy Day, as a formal counter against the great forgetting.

rwmj• 7 years ago

The facts in this UK diplomatic cable are disputed, but it has some terrifying details: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/UK_cable_on_Tiananmen_Square_...

fasthandle2• 7 years ago

Terrifying indeed. No comment other than for others to please read this.

onetimemanytime2• 7 years ago

What did they do to the bodies? But then, since the Party is/was in power the burial sites would be off limits and cleaned many times over.

I wonder what would have happened to China at that time had the Government fallen? Civil war, many smaller states...? They have no history of democracy

mieseratte2• 7 years ago

They detail it in the linked cable, but it involves incinerating mutilated remains.

lobotryas• 7 years ago

Read the cable. They (allegedly), pulverized the bodies into a “pie” by repeatedly running them over with APCs, then washed them down drains and disinfected.

amorphic• 7 years ago

In an ABC (Australia) news story this week a journalist who was involved back in 1989 recounted that families were only allowed to collect the bodies of victims from hospitals and morgues if they agreed to sign a document confirming that the victim had died under "accidental circumstances".

This was one means by which the official bodycount was understated.

mieseratte2• 7 years ago

That is an incredible read. I knew Tiananmen was bad, but I didn’t realize it was that bad. The part about body disposal is nothing short of terrifying.

mrguyorama• 7 years ago

Curiosity; Who disputes them other than China? And with what evidence?

tepidandroid2• 7 years ago

The top voted comment from basically the same thread in 2017 [1] does a good job of presenting a point of contention in a relatively neutral fashion:

from the /u/aleyan:

The figure was given in a secret diplomatic cable from then British ambassador to China, Alan Donald. Mr Donald's telegram is from 5 June, and he says his source was someone who "was passing on information given him by a close friend who is currently a member of the State Council".

Here we have a telegram by a guy (British Ambassador) who heard from a guy (unknown) who heard from a guy (unknown State Council) facts about the events of the day prior (massacre was on June 4th). Where did the unknown State Council official get his estimates from; were those official or just something he heard and repeated (and when did he get them)? Initial estimates of disasters are often quite wrong; here they were produced in game of telephone in a day or less; and they are not collaborated by any evidence we have now.

I rank the quality of new evidence as low. Rumors repeated in old official telegrams are still rumors. I expected BBC to have reported more critically. Alan Donald is still alive; BBC could have asked him if he received any updates to that first number that he trusted more.

I also have to fault BBC for it's phrasing around Donald's source. At first reading it sounded like Donald's source is an unnamed member of the State Council who is a close friend of the Ambassador. After reading BBC's sentence a carefully however; it sounds like the Donald's source is a person who is a friend of an unnamed member of the State Council. This ambiguous sentence is deceptive.

EDIT: I see vote count moving up and down on this comment making me think it is controversial. If you disagree with my doubts on the veracity of this story, write a comment. Maybe I missed something.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15993956

Leary• 7 years ago

" FACT. ON ARRIVAL AT TIANANMEN TROOPS FROM SMR HAD SEPARATED STUDENTS AND RESIDENTS. STUDENTS UNDERSTOOD THEY WERE GIVEN ONE HOUR TO LEAVE SQUARE BUT AFTER FIVE MINUTES APCS ATTACKED. STUDENTS LINKED ARMS BUT WERE MOWN DOWN INCLUDING SOLDIERS. APCS THEN RAN OVER BODIES TIME AND TIME AGAIN TO MAKE QUOTE PIE UNQUOTE AND REMAINS COLLECTED BY BULLDOZER. REMAINS INCINERATED AND THEN HOSED DOWN DRAINS."

This is contradicted by most accounts.

From wikipedia:

"At 4 am, the lights on the Square suddenly turned off, and the government's loudspeaker announced: "Clearance of the Square begins now. We agree with the students' request to clear the Square."[124] The students sang The Internationale and braced for a last stand.[125] Hou returned and informed student leaders of his agreement with the troops. At 4:30 am, the lights relit and the troops began to advance on the Monument from all sides. At about 4:32 am, Hou Dejian took the student's loudspeaker and recounted his meeting with the military. Many students, who learned of the talks for the first time, reacted angrily and accused him of cowardice.[126]

The soldiers initially stopped about 10 meters from the students. The first row of troops took aim with machine guns in the prone position. Behind them soldiers squatted and stood with assault rifles. Mixed among them were anti-riot police with clubs. Further back were tanks and APCs.[126] Feng Congde took to the loudspeaker and explained that there was no time left to hold a meeting. Instead, a voice vote would decide the collective action of the group. Although the vote's results were inconclusive, Feng said the "gos" had prevailed.[127] Within a few minutes, at about 4:35 am, a squad of soldiers in camouflaged uniform charged up the Monument and shot out the students' loudspeaker.[127][126] Other troops beat and kicked dozens of students at the Monument, seizing and smashing their cameras and recording equipment. An officer with a loudspeaker called out "you better leave or this won't end well."[126]

Some of the students and professors persuaded others still sitting on the lower tiers of the Monument to get up and leave, while soldiers beat them with clubs and gunbutts and prodded them with bayonets. Witnesses heard bursts of gunfire.[126] At about 5:10 am, the students began to leave the Monument. They linked hands and marched through a corridor to the southeast,[115][126] though some departed through the north.[126] Those who refused to leave were beaten by soldiers and ordered to join the departing procession. Having removed the students from the square, soldiers were ordered to relinquish their ammunition, after which they were allowed a short reprieve from 7 am to 9 am.[128] The soldiers were then ordered to clear the square of all debris left over from the student occupation. The debris was either piled and burnt on the square, or placed in large plastic bags that were airlifted away by military helicopters.[129][130] After the cleanup, the troops stationed at The Great Hall of the People remained confined within for the next nine days. During this time, the soldiers were left to sleep on the floors and fed a single packet of instant noodles split between three men daily. Officers apparently suffered no such deprivation, and were served regular meals apart from their troops."

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests

m-i-l• 7 years ago

One of the things I hadn't fully appreciated, until reading the link, was how divided even the perpetrators were. Firstly, there are indications that not all the armies worked together, e.g. "Beijing [Military Region] commander had refused to supply outside armies with food, water or barracks", and the suggestion that different armies may have had allegiance to different factions in the State Council, e.g. "we cannot substantiate reports that six military regions (not Beijing) support Li Peng". And secondly, if the information is correct, it seems the atrocities were committed by the 27 Army who were just one of at least 8 other armies present. Furthermore there are even multiple references to troops from other armies being victims of the 27 Army, e.g. "27 Army APCs [Armored Personnel Carriers] opened fire on the crowd (both civilians and soldiers) ... APCs ran over troops and civilians", "27 Army ordered to spare noone and shot wounded SMR [Shenyang Military Region] soldiers". And even within the 27 Army itself "27 Army officer shot dead by own troops apparently because he faltered". Sounds quite chaotic.

scarmig4• 7 years ago

The protesters were also beset by factionalism. One issue the government had was that it didn't have a reliable partner in negotiations: different student groups had a diverse range of goals, from anti-corruption measures, to more socialism, to more capitalism, to freedom of speech, to democracy, to better housing standards, to lower tuition. And there was a constant tension between moderate and hardline student groups.

Imagine if Occupy Wall Street was 100,000 strong and had occupied Times Square, and the city of New York was trying to negotiate with them to meet their demands.

c789a123• 7 years ago

The free world gave the criminal CCP regime a free pass after the 1989 massacre. The same criminal regime get stronger in the last 30 years and put on a capitalist shell on its bloody skin. But it never stopped its criminal practices but has been doing it more relentlessly just with more concealment. For about 20 years it made large scale human organ sells from people they kidnapped or arrested. It put up huge concentration camps in Xinjing to get rid of some minor race people in the number of millions. That is just a small sample of its crimes still actively happening. I am glad US starts to realize the CCP regime is not a country following normal human ethics.

dang2• 7 years ago

Would you please stop using HN for nationalistic or political battle? You've been doing that repeatedly, and we ban such accounts. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

objectivetruth• 7 years ago

I appreciate the reason for the rule, but in this case, I'm curious who this person was "battling?" Seems like it was a top-level post that didn't argue with the original headline or article, but provided additional context. And I found it helpful since I'd forgotten about the whole "execute prisoners for their organs" thing that was (is) going on in China and that seems relevant.

The article is about a massacre, lots of other threads debated the existence and scale of atrocities in the massacre, and this specific thread just seemed to mention similar atrocities?

Specifically, if they had removed the "evil" and "bloody" metaphor, and phrased it like "Considering the supply chain and trade interactions between the US and China, it's worth considering the significant differences in human rights. For instance, the black market organ schemes of the 1990s and the Uighur concentration camps where millions of ethnic minorities are currently interned." <-- That seems like the exact same content which is completely relevant to conversations here?

(I'm an American with no Chinese connections or vested interest in the conversation, but I'm just curious how it specifically crossed a line, especially given the recent HN conversations about political discussions. I know it's a fine line but for this particular topic, it sparked my interest. Thanks in advance for your consideration.)

juanuys• 7 years ago

A good bit of TV recently about "tank man":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimerica_(miniseries)

Shivetya• 7 years ago

The part that irks me is that we still allow companies which preach human rights in Western countries to not only turn a deaf ear to the abuses of China's past and present but to continue manufacturing there without quarrel.

Each time their CEO's get up to preach about human rights they need to be challenged on their activities in China. China to them is a profit center and nothing more.

conanbatt3• 7 years ago

CEO's are not the ones to be accountable for foreign domestic policy are they.

Thats a politician's job.

parthdesai• 7 years ago

If you are going to preach about Human rights as a CEO and operate in China, it makes the person a hypocrite. By saying it's not a CEO's job doesn't mean the CEO is not guilty.

conanbatt3• 7 years ago

CEO's are not the ones to be accountable for foreign domestic policy are they.

Thats a politician's job. And what you want, if you do want to change how china operates internally, is to strong arm them economically or with the military.

And thats what if you do want china to change their domestic policy you need to back things like Trumps Trade War, and also be ready for a military dispute.

baby• 7 years ago

So your idea of improving the situation in China is to cut ties with the country? Looks like it worked well with North Korea.

philwelch3• 7 years ago

Trading with them hasn’t done any favors for the people of Xinjiang.

ubercow133• 7 years ago

And you, posting on your phone or PC made partly in China, are also turning a deaf ear and then preaching on HN. That's exactly 'letting' them get away with it right?

HackPotter• 7 years ago

This isn't really a good-faith argument. It isn't tenable to live and work in modern society without the use of a phone or PC, and it certainly isn't possible to connect with people to effect societal change at any significant level without using the internet (and by extension a device capable of connecting to the internet). The very fact that the parent comment was pointing out the issues with western corporations outsourcing their pollution-producing practices means that the commenter isn't "turning a deaf ear" to the issue; they're very much aware and talking about it. What you're saying comes across as disingenuous and hostile, when as far as you know the individual you're responding to could be working diligently to fight against industrial pollution and climate change.

PavlovsCat4• 7 years ago

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha

fasthandle2• 7 years ago

Not only a profit center, but an outsourced pollution center.

F500 CEOs outsource pollution to China.

julienfr112• 7 years ago

Could github turn it's background color black for a day ?

lawsan645• 7 years ago

Please check out the feed of Peter Turnley on IG or FB. He was a photojournalist who was in Beijing in May-Jun of 1989.

utopcell• 7 years ago

I am curious to see how all these low orbit satellite internet projects will play out for countries like China and North Korea.

miki123211• 7 years ago

It always strikes me as weird that 4 june 1989 is both the day when the chinese were protesting for freedom and the day when the poles had their first free election. I'm a pole myself, and when I've heard about Tiananmen Square for the first time (age 14 or so) I was wondering if one event was somehow related to the other, as the movements had some things in common.

philwelch3• 7 years ago

1989 was the year that communist regimes across the world fell under pressure from their own people. China was the exception.

scarmig4• 7 years ago

Interestingly, many of the student leaders are listed as highly wanted fugitives by the PRC to this day. At least one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu%27erkaixi ) has tried to turn himself in for trial, multiple times, in places as diverse as Macau, HK, and various embassies throughout the world, but he's been refused each time and deported to definitely-part-of-China Taiwan.

refurb3• 7 years ago

Wow. That’s really telling. I assume the Chinese gov’t thinks that any effort to prosecute him would just bring more attention to a mostly forgotten episode.

Reminds me of the stories a coworker told me about growing up in Romania under Ceaușescu. A neighbor would disappear and a new family would be living in their house the next day.

Nobody ever said anything. Just acted like they had always lived there.

person_of_color• 7 years ago

How can we reconcile a country that does this and also brings hundreds of millions out of poverty?

The same way Britain colonized India, but they made it whole too.

nithinm• 7 years ago

Britain colonised India, looted it dry, abused its people. So 'making it whole' by torturing a country is not 'remarkable' act.

Tiananmen Square: What happened in the protests of 1989?

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