The Tiananmen Square Massacre Myth

[stickdog99]

[BrandonD]

I'm pleased to report that Tank Man was not run over.

Check @8:00

What is significant is that *many* people have memories, specific visual memories, of seeing this man being run over on camera. One person I spoke with online said it stood out especially in their mind because it was the first person he had ever seen die in real life.

That seems like a funny memory to just fabricate. And apparently it was "mistakenly remembered" by LOTS of people.

There are a handful of historical events that are associated with this strange phenomenon, the main one being an event where Nelson Mandela died - on a specific date several years before he actually died - which is where the term came from.

I don't pretend to have a theory, well that's a lie I have a lot of theories, but I don't take any of them seriously

Just saying that there is something off about this story.

[82_28]

Wow. What a scam. It had to be fake. The Chinese government would have never sent tanks in (in a line no less) to neutralize simple people. I certainly don't have the "angle" on this. But viewing it all again with what I know and feel now. I feel strongly this shit was fake. What good would tanks be to unarmed people? When that guy climbs onto the tank and if the tanks were SERIOUS, they would have just shot him dead.

It was iconic. The reason for it was for an iconic moment for the time. Worldwide viewers fell for this shit back then. I did myself. Hindsight says this whole show was bullshit. Hmmmm. . .

[Luther Blissett]

Maybe there was a dramatization or version doctored by some sensationalist media that lead to this widespread mis-memory.

[JackRiddler]

Hmmm... fabrication can work both ways, you know. Could this be a case where the truth really does lie somewhere in between? Given China's recent history, are you really surprised that there'd be a massive student uprising after more than a decade of rule by restored capitalist running dogs? For those of us who were reading at the time, the bit about a lot of people being more on the Maoist side was not suppressed... maybe not in the NY Times, but... Did they fabricate the size of the crowds in the pictures of the square? I never had memories of the tank man being run over, and never knew what happened to him.

[stickdog99]

It wasn't all fake.

There were tens of thousands of protesters in the Square at the height of the protests.

Tens of thousands of troops were sent in to restore order and quell rioting.

At least scores of people were killed by the troops and a few of the troops were killed by the people. But not in the Square itself.

[BrandonD]

Maybe there was a dramatization or version doctored by some sensationalist media that lead to this widespread mis-memory.

I've definitely considered that possibility. Different "takes" of a theatrical event shown in different areas of the world, perhaps as a large scale social analysis.

That's a pretty elaborate scheme, though. But seeing the extent of entirely fabricated stories here in the states, I don't consider it completely out of the question.

[BrandonD]

It wasn't all fake.

There were tens of thousands of protesters in the Square at the height of the protests.

Tens of thousands of troops were sent in to restore order and quell rioting.

At least scores of people were killed by the troops and a few of the troops were killed by the people. But not in the Square itself.

Just curious what evidence you are basing your very confident remarks upon.

[stickdog99]

Somehow I doubt that all the footage here was videoshopped.

[stickdog99]

Weird that the CIA was involved with an operation to smuggle dissident leaders (agents?) out of China. Also weird that the operation was so successful.

Link

Operation Yellow Bird—is the name for clandestine rescue from China of most important pro-democracy leaders. For 6 months after the June crackdown, CIA’s most valued agents in China, Hong Kong, and Macao provided A safe haven and means of escape. Wuer kaixi and Li Lu disappeared, later Other leading dissidents wan Runnan and Yan Jaiqi, made it to west. During Last week in may, U.S. Ambassador Lilley handed out more than 200 visas to Intellectuals, scientists, and students and on several occasions lent money to escapees. In absence of credible CIA leadership in China, Lilley was once again CIA’s Beijing COS. Chinese astrophysicist, Feng Lizhi, went to Embassy for safe haven. Perry, m. (1992). Eclipse: the last days of the CIA 247-8

President Bush ordered a covert action that rescued pro-democracy leaders in China. CIA coordinated underground railroad that smuggled perhaps hundreds to Hong Kong in Operation Yellow Bird that involved the use of CIA-supplied disguises, scrambler telephones, night-vision gun sites, infra-red signalers, speedboats and weapons for off-shore ops. For a 6 month period following crackdown, a network of dozens of CIA’s most valued agents in China, Hong Kong and Macao provided a safe haven and means of escape for most important organizers. Bush’s finding endorsed a program already underway. Mark Perry’s, Eclipse: the last days of The CIA. Washington times 9/17/92 a6

Operation Yellowbird was a daring plot to help dissidents escape. Over the past 7 years 500 Chinese dissidents rescued including Wuer Kaixi. Op an alliance of human-rights advocates, western diplomats, businessmen, professional smugglers, and kings of Hong Kong’s underworld. More than 80 mainland dissidents are still stuck in Hong Kong, waiting for asylum somewhere. Some have been there for years. Operation Yellowbird was born night of Beijing massacre. Within hours 40 pro-democracy activists united to form Yellowbird. They collected money from the business community (comment—probably the CIA) and conspired with mob bosses and smugglers. On at least five occasions extraction teams were sent into China to find and rescue top dissidents they had scrambler devices, night-vision goggles, infrared signalers, even make-up artists. Some saw hand of CIA but these accusations denied. Worked with cooperative local officials. In aftermath of 89 the U.S. And France threw open their doors for escaping students. The group that takes care of new arrivals is The Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movement in China. Wuer Kaixi is now a student in California, he plans to help coordinate protests In Hong Kong. Newsweek 4/1/96 45. (Comment—Newsweek either did not check the public record or may be relying on officialdom in denying CIA involvement).

[stickdog99]

Wait, wait, wait... hold on, guys. We're talking about a few hundred people dying, minimum. Killed by soldiers with guns and tanks. Whether they did so in the square itself or on the boulevards adjacent to said square is hardly of any significance at all.

And my memories of this event are QUITE vivid, thank you.

I'm sure there are some aspects that we remember wrong - and that were played up by the military/media/intel/industrial complex. But it was NOT a hoax event. If something of similar scale had happened in the USA at that time, we'd STILL be recuperating from it as a nation. I mean, for pete's sake, we still whine about 4 dead in Ohio!

YOPJ

A Response From the Columbia School of Journalism

Over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night. They repeated it often before and during Clinton’s trip. On the day the president arrived in Beijing, a Baltimore Sun headline (June 27, page 1A) referred to “Tiananmen, where Chinese students died.” A USA Today article (June 26, page 7A) called Tiananmen the place “where pro-democracy demonstrators were gunned down.” The Wall Street Journal (June 26, page A10) described “the Tiananmen Square massacre” where armed troops ordered to clear demonstrators from the square killed “hundreds or more.” The New York Post (June 25, page 22) said the square was “the site of the student slaughter.”

The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.

...

A common response to this corrective analysis is: So what? The Chinese army killed many innocent people that night. Who cares exactly where the atrocities took place? That is an understandable, and emotionally satisfying, reaction. Many of us feel bile rising in our throats at any attempt to justify what the Chinese leadership and a few army commanders did that night.

But consider what is lost by not giving an accurate account of what happened, and what such sloppiness says to Chinese who are trying to improve their press organs by studying ours. The problem is not so much putting the murders in the wrong place, but suggesting that most of the victims were students. Black and Munro say “what took place was the slaughter not of students but of ordinary workers and residents — precisely the target that the Chinese government had intended.” They argue that the government was out to suppress a rebellion of workers, who were much more numerous and had much more to be angry about than the students. This was the larger story that most of us overlooked or underplayed.

It is hard to find a journalist who has not contributed to the misimpression. Rereading my own stories published after Tiananmen, I found several references to the “Tiananmen massacre.” At the time, I considered this space-saving shorthand. I assumed the reader would know that I meant the massacre that occurred in Beijing after the Tiananmen demonstrations. But my fuzziness helped keep the falsehood alive. Given enough time, such rumors can grow even larger and more distorted. When a journalist as careful and well-informed as Tim Russert, NBC’s Washington bureau chief, can fall prey to the most feverish versions of the fable, the sad consequences of reportorial laziness become clear. On May 31 on Meet the Press, Russert referred to “tens of thousands” of deaths in Tiananmen Square.

The facts of Tiananmen have been known for a long time. When Clinton visited the square this June, both The Washington Post and The New York Times explained that no one died there during the 1989 crackdown. But these were short explanations at the end of long articles. I doubt that they did much to kill the myth.

Not only has the error made the American press’s frequent pleas for the truth about Tiananmen seem shallow, but it has allowed the bloody-minded regime responsible for the June 4 murders to divert attention from what happened. There was a massacre that morning. Journalists have to be precise about where it happened and who were its victims, or readers and viewers will never be able to understand what it meant.

[Elvis]

When Clinton visited the square this June, both The Washington Post and The New York Times explained that no one died there during the 1989 crackdown. But these were short explanations at the end of long articles. I doubt that they did much to kill the myth.

When I don't have time to read an entire news story about something like this, I tend to skim the first paragraphs then jump to the last paragraph, where often the most important or telling piece of info will be related as a casual "btw,..."

[BrandonD]

Somehow I doubt that all the footage here was videoshopped.

I don't know, have you messed with CS5?

[AlicetheKurious]

I fell for it too, but not totally. The man "run over by the tank" was only one of the iconic "images" (if I remember correctly, the film was cut after the confrontation, and a corpse was shown on the ground -- your imagination was supposed to link the two images, and in most cases it did). Back in 1989, I had never heard of "color revolutions" sponsored by the CIA-NED-Freedom House- OSI, but it was images like these that struck me most forcibly:





and especially this one, of the "goddess of democracy," aka the "goddess of liberty":



To someone with a background in Third World politics, knowing the well-earned hostility towards the US' brutal imperialism that was common to all genuine liberation movements, ESPECIALLY in China, these images stank to high heaven. All those articulate and properly-spelled English messages on t-shirts and signs, and the very American symbology struck me as jarringly fake in a country where hardly anybody spoke English and very, very few were exposed to US "culture" and media. (It reminds me of the hilarious picture with the Muslim Brotherhood supporter carrying a sign that says, "Gays for Morsy," and the banners over the Muslim Brotherhood camp proclaiming the need for "democracy", under which the Brotherhood's own spokesmen were inciting their followers to "slaughter the infidels.") The whole thing was professionally packaged to appeal to a Western -- especially American -- audience, and to require no more culture, knowledge or intellect than the average tv commercial.

BTW, deeply buried in the Iranian "green revolution" thread, there is a heated though sporadic discussion about this very subject:

viewtopic.php?p=271228#p271228

also in the same thread, from an overview by Thierry Meyssan about US-sponsored "color revolutions":

The first attempted « color revolution » failed in 1989. The goal was to overthrow Deng Xiaoping by using one of his close collaborators, the Chinese Communist Party secretary-general Zhao Ziyang, in order to open Chinese markets to American investors and to bring China into the US orbit. Young supporters of Zhao invaded Tiananmen square [5]. They were presented in the Western media as unpoliticized students fighting for freedom against the party’s Conservative wing, when in fact this was infighting within the Deng entourage between pro-American and nationalist factions. After having ignored provocations for a long time Deng decided to use force. Depending on sources, the repression ended with 300 to 1000 dead. 20 years later, the Western version of this failed coup has not changed. Western media which recently covered the anniversary of that event presented it as a « popular uprising » and expressed surprise that people in Beijing do not remember the event. This is because there was nothing "popular" about this struggle for power within the Party. This was not a concern for people.