Tiananmen tank man

On 4th June 1989, 15 years ago, the student movement in Peking achieved its cruel high point. The army strikes the rebellion on the place of heavenly peace bloodily down. At that day and on it following ones hundreds…

June 3, 2004 @ 11:45 am | Comment

June 4th

Fifteen years ago, on this day, tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square. Soldiers of the PLA opened fire on students and civilians in the Square. Fifteen years on, so much has changed. Or has it? The date, June 4th, is still…

June 3, 2004 @ 4:07 pm | Comment

Amen. I hope that picture gets reposted to every corner of the world today.

June 4, 2004 @ 9:00 am | Comment

what did happe to the yong man. Is he still live now?

June 4, 2004 @ 9:53 am | Comment

There are several theories about this. One is that he was arrested and killed, but the source of this rumor has since been discredited. Jan Wong in Red China Blues says she believes he was smuggled out of the country, but if this were true, why wouldn’t he let everyone know? (He could make a fortune in book deals.) Others says he works in a factory outside of Beijing — but no one knows for sure.

June 4, 2004 @ 10:13 am | Comment

The poor American girl got run over by Israeli tank doing the same thing.

June 4, 2004 @ 3:09 pm | Comment

Soldiers of the PLA, when they learned of what they were being asked to do, threw down their weapons and cried. And then they tried to help the dying.

June 4, 2004 @ 4:46 pm | Comment

HKR, was that a widespread phenomenon? I know that the early rounds of soldiers who were brought in actually mingled with the students and showed a lot of sympathy. But the ones who were brought in from outside Beijing in June were a much harder lot and far less sympathetic, or so I’ve read.

June 4, 2004 @ 4:51 pm | Comment

This event [Tiananmen] was very nearly mirrored in Berlin the day the wall fell. I wonder what exactly it was that made the Chinese soldiers (the one who followed orders) fire on the protestors in China, but kept the German guards from firing in Berlin.

Does anybody know how many soldiers were shot or imprisoned for refusing to put down the demonstrators, or if there is a memorial to them. I think that they are the forgotten victims of Tiananmen.

We all think about the protestors who wanted to be there and believed I their cause, but we rarely think about the conscripts and young soldiers who were ordered to fire on their own people and refused knowing that it would finish them in the army.

June 5, 2004 @ 5:01 am | Comment

My son shot some film (I have seen it) of one soldier’s body that had been dealt with by the citizens. It had been burned and strung up on a bus or truck near the Square.

June 5, 2004 @ 6:15 pm | Comment

End time

I would like to know what you would do if your senior officer pointed a gun at you and told you to shoot a demonstrator.

Hundreds of soliders were summoned and court-martialed because they REFUSED to fire. They were also victims of the outrage that occoured.

X civilians died, but what about the soldiers killed by their own country for standing up for the rights of the people by refusing to comit an act of murder.

I believe that disobaying the order to shoot was probably punishable by death or imprisonment for a CONSCRIPT.

What you have just told me is that not all of the demonstrators were kind warm people, some of them were as brutal as the officers who ordered the massacre in Beijing.

June 5, 2004 @ 11:49 pm | Comment

@Angry Chinese Blogger. The only reason why the German Democratic »Volksarmee« did not shot on the demonstrators on the Berliner Wall was cause the Communism Party didn’t give this command. Why they didn’t give this command? I think it had to do with the visit of Michael Gorbatschov in Berlin in this days. As far as we know it it was also Gorbatschovs desicion not to call the Russian Army to slay down the Rebellion as Honecker whished it.

June 6, 2004 @ 4:43 am | Comment

Lemming, Gorbaschov was also visiting Beijing at the time of June 4th. One of the reasons for the then Chinese government to order the shooting was that they need the SQUARE to be cleared out to welcome his VISIT…

June 6, 2004 @ 7:30 pm | Comment

Lemming is absolutely right about Berlin. Gorbachev had decided the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was unviable and could no longer be held together, what with Rusia going bankrupt and the satellites demanding freedom. He let it happen, not that he had much choice. Still, I always admired him for facing reality and not surrendering to the urge to hold onto power. That was a trait we had never seen in a Soviet dictator before.

To the last poster, I think you are being a bit simplistic. They had a lot more to worry about that day than finding a place to park Mr. Gorbachev. (Was he even still there on June 4? I forget.)

June 6, 2004 @ 7:52 pm | Comment

Asia by blog

By popular demand (precisely one person, but I’ll take) Asia by blog is back to give you a taste of what’s what in Asia recently. Firstly Hemlock finds himself waiting alone outside the HK General Post Office waiting to indulge his philately. Conrad qu…

June 7, 2004 @ 11:55 pm | Comment

Asia by blog

By popular demand (precisely one person, but I’ll take) Asia by blog is back to give you a taste of what’s what in Asia recently. Firstly Hemlock finds himself waiting alone outside the HK General Post Office waiting to indulge his philately. Conrad qu…

June 8, 2004 @ 12:00 am | Comment

I try to find the truth about Tianenmen. That’s very well said about the pressure on the conscripts. I had never given them a thought. It would be very true, I think. My wife is Chinese and she says there’s no doubt that hundreds of students were killed but even she – and she admires the Chinese army very much for the disaster work they do in China, if nothing else – hadn’t given a thought to those in the army that might have been punished or even died.
It seems very hard to find accurate definitive reporting of the even. I recently read ‘Black Horse Odyssey’ by David Harris and he was in China and involved with students at that time and he provides a little definite information, but not much.
I’ve very interested in discovering the truth of this matter. I was in China for a few years and I know that within China it is not spoken of and the official line is that no one was killed (or virtually no one) and I don’t believe anything like it will happen again. The Chinese are very happy with the way things are going in China at the moment. So I’d say it’s all definitely history now. But, nevertheless, I would like to know if anyone can point me to real information.

regards
ab

February 20, 2005 @ 4:33 pm | Comment