Fun fact, Tank Man at Tiananmen wasn’t run over by a tank, and despite the event being called the “Tiananmen massacre” leaked US embassy cables say no one was shot at the square.
In 2009, James Miles, who was the BBC correspondent in Beijing at the time, admitted that he had “conveyed the wrong impression” and that “there was no massacre on Tiananmen Square. Protesters who were still in the square when the army reached it were allowed to leave after negotiations with martial law troops [ …] There was no Tiananmen Square massacre, but there was a Beijing massacre”.
Western media also never seem to mention the dozen or so police officers who were killed and immolated before the repression started, somehow that’s irrelevant or something. Can you imagine how things would have gone if a dozen police officer had been murdered and burnt during the WTC protests in 1999, or BLM?
my favorite part about these kinds of comments is that the article they commonly cite basically says there was no tiananmen massacre because the massacre happened outside of the square in the rest of beijing, and that’s treated like it’s some big gotcha
The fact that the official statements are decisively false is a gotcha yes. Why would you trust the rest of the reporting and official story when you know they lied about basic things like this. What makes you think that the number they throw around is anywhere close to reality when they can’t even tell you where the events happen?
It’s not like China even denies that people died.
You can look at the pictures I linked too, plenty of dead people in them. These are available from the Chinese state.
I’m less concerned about the specifics of where it happened and how many people died, and more concerned about how military personnel shot live ammunition at citizens.
According to the Tiananmen Papers, a collection of internal Communist party files, soldiers started using live ammunition at around 10.30pm, after trying and failing to disperse the crowd with tear gas and rubber bullets.
So that first articles lists its only source as “secret cables”. Isn’t that exactly what this meme is about?
No, leaked official cables of the secret designation is not the same thing as an anonymous source. The secret designation only denotes that these cables were intended for people with a clearance level of secret (as opposed to say No foreign, Top Secret, etc). The cables authenticity leave no doubt and have been thoroughly investigated by journalists.
You can read these cables for yourself on WikiLeaks (I don’t know why the telegraph wouldn’t simply link to them).
Here’s one for example:
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html
EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF EVENTS AT TIANANMEN SQUARE. ALTHOUGH THEIR ACCOUNT GENERALLY FOLLOWS THOSE PREVIOUSLY REPORTED, THEIR UNIQUE EXPERIENCES PROVIDE ADDITIONAL INSIGHT AND CORROBORATION OF EVENTS IN THE SQUARE. THEY WERE ABLE TO ENTER AND LEAVE THE SQUARE SEVERAL TIMES AND WERE NOT HARASSED BY TROOPS. REMAINING WITH STUDENTS BY THE MONUMENT TO THE PEOPLE’S HEROES UNTIL THE FINAL WITHDRAWAL, THE DIPLOMAT SAID THERE WERE NO MASS SHOOTINGS OF STUDENTS IN THE SQUARE OR AT THE MONUMENT. END SUMMARY.
