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New book reveals Tiananmen square massacre, others fabricated by US (english.almayadeen.net)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/genzedong@lemmygrad.ml
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[–] 57 points 3 years ago (2 children)

It was not fabricated, it was exaggerated. Clashes occurred around Beijing and bloodshed was real. Most of them were Maoists clashing with pro market reform government.

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  • [–] 72 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Nobody is denying bloodshed. There absolutely were violent protests outside the square. The claim in question is that the military gunned down thousands of peaceful protesters in the square, which so far as I know is a claim that's exclusively made by people who were not there.

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  • [–] 57 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)

    Even that is giving too much credit to the US government narrative.

    There literally are all the US mainstream news outlets like CBS News who actually had reporters there at the time: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/

    Also from classified US communications with assets on the ground: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html

    Funniest thing is that "tank man" photo idiots spam on Reddit all the time. Most people in the west don't realize there is video of it, that the guy didn't get run over. Furthermore they assume he was blocking tanks heading towards the square, infact those tanks were at the time headed away from the square to avoid engaging with armed agitators (people with guns and grenades that had killed police) in a crowded environment. Dude was trying to make them go back.

    The deaths that day were people who got gunned down by the "protestors" or the police who were killed when the "protestors" threw grenades (military ordnance) into police vehicles. People that were armed by the CIA as part of a color revolution operation, one that failed because it didn't actually have any support and more importantly because the PLA commander on the scene ordered his units to leave the area rather than responding in kind. The only actual protestors that day were communists having labor protests happening nearby and not the dancing libertine youth acting as the face of the US color revolution operation involving armed groups trying unsuccessfully to provoke the PLA soliders into responding to deadly attacks with deadly force in a crowded urban environment.

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  • [–] 27 points 3 years ago

    My personal opinion on the matter isn't that much different from yours (the biggest reason being that the media blitz about the massacre seemed preplanned... It just didn't go according to plan). The problem is that I can't prove anything, so it's all conjecture. So I typically leave that out. It's already a sensitive enough subject.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    My understanding is that after the initial ambush of unarmed PLA soldiers armed PLA units were eventually able to get to the area and engage the insurgents in combat, and that the deaths were a mix of PLA soldiers and insurgents, with probably some innocent bystanders because war is hell no matter how you try to prevent civilian casualties.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    I don't think violent protests is an appropriate description. From what I understand armed insurgents ambushed and killed unarmed PLA soldiers and there was a running street battle as armed PLA units tried to get to the area to combat them.

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  • [+] -17 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    On balance, it would be fair to say that while thousands of protestors were most likely not gunned down in the square itself, hundreds were being gunned down around it. So there was a massacre by the PLA, it just didn't happen in the square itself.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm

    https://archive.is/20191208232045/https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/13/world/turmoil-china-tiananmen-crackdown-student-s-account-questioned-major-points.html

    https://earnshaw.com/writings/memoirs/tiananmen-story

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  • [–] 42 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    If they were just protestors, why were they gunned down while the ones in the square could all be cleared out with no fatalities? Did the people who incinerated soldiers and strung up their burnt corpses leave peacefully beforehand?

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  • [+] -11 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Because the PLA forced themselves through several blockades before they were able to reach the square. It was at these blockades that the strongest resistance was met, and where the majority of the killing occurred.

    We don't know for sure, but the order seems to be that [the PLA] have to get [to the square] by midnight. So by 10:00 p.m. they're getting desperate. They cannot fight their way through thousands of people with riot shields and billy clubs, so each of these columns coming into the city starts radioing into headquarters, asking for permission to go ahead at any cost. Finally that permission starts coming down sometime between 10:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.

    The first rounds of fire catch everybody by surprise. The people in the streets don't expect this to happen. There are a couple of hospitals right near Muxidi, and the casualties start showing up within 10 or 15 minutes of the first round of gunfire. The casualties run very high because people didn't expect to be shot at with live ammunition. When they start firing, people say, "Oh, it's rubber bullets." Even after it becomes clear, even after they realize that the army is going to go ahead at any cost, people still pour into the streets. This is the amazing thing: People were just so angry, so furious at what was happening in their city that they were not going to step back and let the army do what it was doing. This is why the casualties from Muxidi on east towards Tiananmen Square were so high. This is the major military confrontation of the evening.

    Source

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  • [–] 33 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    That account as-presented leaves out the immolating of unarmed soldiers via petrol bombs, which seems necessarily to distort their evaluations of why people behaved how they did. iirc some "protestors" also took the liberty of seizing weapons from an APC that had a catastrophic failure and killed the soldiers inside, and this was still before the crackdown. Remember, a number of soldiers also died, they had to have been killed somehow (though one was killed by friendly fire and like 6 or 7 by the accident I mentioned).

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    if new yorkers burned some nypd officers to death and then a bunch of people were killed I'd be on the people's side

    not taking a grand stand on the events I don't know shit about fuck and don't rightly care honestly

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago*

    Remember that picture of 50,000 uniformed fascists taking over part of the city in a show of force allegedly for a funeral because some pig got got?

    That said, my understanding is that relations between the PLA soldiers and the students were positive throughout. Almost all the PLA soldiers in the square had no weapons, including no batons or riot helmets. I believe there were some riot units present but they were a small number relative to the overall PLA presence. There are stories of the PLA soldiers and students singing songs and sharing food. It's important to remember that most of the students in the square were advocating for a return to Communist economics from the Dengist market liberalization. From what I understand the CPC didn't really know what to do with them because they didn't want to start a confrontation with people demanding more communism, and that's largely why the event was almost entirely peaceful.

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  • [–] 40 points 3 years ago

    So there was a massacre by the PLA, it just didn’t happen in the square itself.

    Current research by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation suggests that the massacre occured in the same place Sadaam Hussein would later store his nonexistant WMDs.

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  • [–] 32 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    most of them by the time the actual violent clashes happened certainly werent maoists. Yeah there was a significant % of the protestors that were coming from the left of the CPC but you have to remember that the unrest span month(s) and many cities. In Tainanmen by that point in the movement and leading to that the make up of those that stayed and engaged in lynchings and clashes with the PLA and police was solidly "pro-democracy/free-s[peech/liberalism" youth. Also western intelligence focus and assets had already zeroed in in Beijing and those elements after smelling blood from the more organic initial country wide unrest.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    My understanding is that that is not the case at all, and that the CIA backed "liberal democracy" gang was a very small number of people who bullied their way in to control of the PA system and never had much support from the students. My understanding is that when the PLA finally made an ultimatum to leave almost all the students joined hands and walked out of the square peacefully. I believe there was some confrontation between PLA soldiers in riot gear and students, but it was relatively minor and confined to small areas of the square. It's hared to overstate that what happened bears no relationship at all to the western narrative.

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