There were protests, undeniable. Initially there were peaceful protests from people who had reservations about Deng’s policies, that the CPC openly engaged with. Li Peng met with these protestors in April. However, the CIA saw the opportunity to forment an uprising and so pushed several student “leaders” into more aggressive actions. “Leaders” who expressed motivations such as wanting China to be controlled by the West.
Even western sources at the time, including ones such as the NYT and Reuters, said that there wasn’t much happening. In the Square itself, there were no casulities. In the entirety of Beijing there were casulties among the PLA, police, and protestors alike. PLA soldiers were unarmed until they were attacked by protestors.
In the square itself the tank (which was leaving the square, not entering) stopped for the infamous tank man, who then…walked away unharmed. Do you think that would happen in many other countries? Considering we see US police charging full speed through protestors, I certainly don’t.
Your are poorly mistaken. There are plenty of gorey pictures and videos of lots of dead and dying protesters in Tiennemen Square from that day. Thousands were killed according to many witnesses.
Out of curiosity, are you referring to that black and white photo of the “bodies” that gets passed around a lot? The one that is actually just a bunch of bicycles?
If you need an eyewitness account from a non-Chinese source, by all means: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html Some beatings, which obviously criticism could be levied at, by otherwise unarmed riot police, but not much more than that.
I’ve seen more photos somewhere, but #12 shows a students brains and a Chinese army helmet. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/g36621881/tiananmen-square-massacre-photos/
Like I said, from april to the beginning of june, initial protests were fairly peaceful and the CPC engaged with them, PLA on site had no weapons initially. Which is definitely an area they messed up, as they may have been able to further limit casulties if they could have responded faster.
The fact that CIA had embedded agents in the protestors and collaborated with the mafia is not exactly a secret, Operation Yellowbird is fairly well known, and that is basically their MO to begin with.
