The Myth of Tiananmen Square Massacre
Most of us probably comfortably sat at home that night, watching the events unfold on TV. Very few people knew what really happened, as this event in America was spinned and twisted into the usual "hate-China" propaganda for mass comsumption.
However, our media made up for it recently. PBS aired a documentary titled The Tank Man.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/
The Frontline segment presented the Chinese government's casualty figure of 250 dead. I don't know if you ever researched this, but this figure is actually in-line with our NSA estimate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
The PBS documentary also dispelled the myth that students were "massacred" on TAM square grounds. If you haven't seen this you should. The documentary interviewed Journalists who were on the ground, as well as footages of thousands of students leaving the TAM square.
Actually, I have read this from another source years ago, from Columbia Univ. School of Journalism:
http://archives.cjr.org/year/98/5/tiananmen.asp
"as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.
A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square, but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully.
Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances."
[Just for reference, throwing molotov cocktail at riot police is a crime in US.]
And Jay Mathews’ intention is clear:
“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.”
However, our media made up for it recently. PBS aired a documentary titled The Tank Man.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/
The Frontline segment presented the Chinese government's casualty figure of 250 dead. I don't know if you ever researched this, but this figure is actually in-line with our NSA estimate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
The PBS documentary also dispelled the myth that students were "massacred" on TAM square grounds. If you haven't seen this you should. The documentary interviewed Journalists who were on the ground, as well as footages of thousands of students leaving the TAM square.
Actually, I have read this from another source years ago, from Columbia Univ. School of Journalism:
http://archives.cjr.org/year/98/5/tiananmen.asp
"as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.
A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square, but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully.
Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances."
[Just for reference, throwing molotov cocktail at riot police is a crime in US.]
And Jay Mathews’ intention is clear:
“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.”
posted by bobby fletcher at 3:46 PM
11 Comments:
It is a little hard to believe that with soldiers, tanks, and gunfires, so few people died on TAM Sq. But I do agree with your skepticism about the Falun Gong claims.
Mr. Nguyen, neither the Columbia Journal Review nor the Akita article is from CCP.
Both are western sources talking about standards of journalism in the west.
Mr. Nguyen, my blog is not about communism, but America's media coverage of TAM.
You are not making any sense; I'm not promoting communism.
Did you watch the PBS special called "Tank Man"?
Mr. Nguyen, my blog is not about communism, but America's media coverage of TAM.
You are not making any sense; I'm not promoting communism.
Did you watch the PBS special called "Tank Man"?
bobby, nice blog you have here. I'll be sure to book mark it.
anyway, I want to point you to a video which has eyewitness account that there was no massacre that night at Tiananmen Square.
my own amateur research suggest that there were killings earlier during the night and the morning after. the killings were mutual - people killed soldiers and vice versa.
The 250 dead figure is about right. The myth that thousands died was created by the CIA, but the US state department revised the figure down to 150 to 500 the next day. By then it was too late, and headlines around the world had printed in large bold words "THOUSANDS MASSACRED".
anyway, the video is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igsW5yQ6428
The eyewitness is Hou Dejian
(Movie clip time:5:57)
HDJ: "Many people say that at Tiananmen square about 2,000 were shot or perhaps several hundred were
shot. On the square were tanks that crushed people and students etc. etc.
I would like to stress that I did not witness this a bit.
I don't know where the other people witness this.
I was still there until 6:30, and I did not witness this.
I kept thinking: Is it necessary for us to use lies to fight the lies of our enemy?
Are the facts itself not strong enough? (clenches his fist)
If we use lies to attack our enemies that use lies, that will only satisfy our moment of anger.
But this is very dangerous because when your lies are exposed then from then on, you will have no power to defeat your enemy."
Nguyen may come from a so called Communist country but he doesn't know anything about Communism.
He is like a German who lives under Hitler and claims that because of Hitler, Democracy is evil because Hitler's Germany was a democracy.
Democratic development is a necessary development of Communism. In fact, people who hated Communism before WWII always thought that Communism is Democracy. Hitler thought about this problem and he said in Chapter 2 of Mien Kampf last 3rd paragraph:
The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight.
If you replace the word "Marxism" above with "democracy" you will see that the sentence would still have been correct. Central planning is only 50% of Communism. The other 50% of Communism is Democracy. Without Democracy, Communism is meaningless.
"America was spinned and twisted.."
that would be "spun" and if you were really a native speaking american named bobby fletcher and not a chinese spy you would probably know that. i wonder how your "handlers" are going to like it?
you are defending the red chinese while living in seattle....you must feel right at home.you can always visit lenin whenever you feel like it too.......almost as good as being at home in china.
let's hope the state department wakes up soon and sends you back where you belong...although seattle is a good second choice, as it's full of commies too.
christmasghost, I'll leave your comment there just to show the world what a racist looks like.
I'm not a Chinese national, ain't never been a citizen of the PRC.
But don't let the facts get in the way of your bigotry.
when someone only knows to repeat "commies are evil" again and again and again, there is no need to talk with him/her rationally. Just watch the movie "The Shining", and you know what kind of person he/she is.
"christmas ghost" is a perfect example of the white, pompous, and ignorant racists that litter the internet these days. These are same type of idiots who will shout "Tibet" and "Commie" at the top of their lungs until they are blue in the face while they masturbate over US Marines killing Children in Iraq.
I also wouldn't be surprised if "christmasghost" there also gets his jollies out of America dropping the atomic bomb on Japan.
The sick thing is, guys like him are more common than one would expect.
Wow...what the fuck...so many of the commenters here are so fucking racist. You know, here I thought I was so lucky to be bred & raised in the States, but if I'm stuck with arrogant racist sons of bitches like you who think you're better than "communsit China" just because we have live in a restricted society guised as freedom under the name of "democracy", then fuck that, I'll pick communism China any day of the week. At least I won't have to deal with obese uneducated Americans. Yeah, I know how to be racist too, I'm American after all. :)
@Christmas Ghost - Dude, if you're going to be anal about grammar, at least learn how to use capital letters, dumbass.
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