2mo ago

World won’t forget Tiananmen Square, US and Taiwan say on 36th anniversary of massacre

www.theguardian.com

Date of 4 June remains one of China’s strictest taboos, with government using increasingly sophisticated tools to censor its discussion

There is no official death toll but activists believe hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed by China’s People’s Liberation Army in the streets around Tiananmen Square, Beijing’s central plaza, on 4 June 1989.

The date of 4 June remains one of China’s strictest taboos, and the Chinese government employs extensive and increasingly sophisticated resources to censor any discussion or acknowledgment of it inside China. Internet censors scrub even the most obscure references to the date from online spaces, and activists in China are often put under increased surveillance or sent on enforced “holidays” away from Beijing.

New research from human rights workers has found that the sensitive date also sees heightened transnational repression of Chinese government critics overseas by the government and its proxies.

195 comments

As an American I think it's helpful to put this into some sort of perspective.
Things the US won't forget:
Tiananmen Square (thousands dead)
Things the US will forget:
Korean War (3mil civilian dead)
Vietnam War (2mil civilian dead)
Iraqi War (1mil civilian dead)
Violent overthrow of East Timor (widely considered a genocide)
Violent overthrow of Afghanistan (twice, over 1 mil dead)
Violent overthrow of Nicaragua
Violent overthrow of Grenada
Violent overthrow of Panama
Violent overthrow of Libya
Coup d'etat of Guatemala
Coup d'etat of Iran
Failed Coup d'etat of Syria
Failed Coup d'etat of Indonesia
Many failed Coup d'etat attempts on Cuba
Coup d'etat of Congo
Coup d'etat of Laos
Coup d'etat of the Dominican Republic
Coup d'etat of Iraq
Coup d'etat of Brazil
Successful Coup d'etat of Indonesia (1 mil dead)
Coup d'etat of Chile
Multiple Coup d'etat of Bolivia
Coup d'etat of Haiti
Multiple Coup d'etat attempts on Venezuela
Coup d'etat of Palestine
Mass civilian casualties, destabilization of many governments, people subject to a lifetime of torture without a trial, all under the War on Terror
This list could be so much longer, but I gotta get to work.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
  
  This makes perfect sense, it's one thing for Taiwanese and Chinese people to remember it but its absolute hypocrisy for the west to comment. Especially as they fund the genocide in Gaza and Western Liberals make excuses for it.
  
  Some commentators have defended the usage of whataboutism and tu quoque in certain contexts. Whataboutism can provide necessary context into whether or not a particular line of critique is relevant or fair, and behavior that may be imperfect by international standards may be appropriate in a given geopolitical neighborhood. Accusing an interlocutor of whataboutism can also in itself be manipulative and serve the motive of discrediting, as critical talking points can be used selectively and purposefully even as the starting point of the conversation (cf. agenda setting, framing, framing effect, priming, cherry picking). The deviation from them can then be branded as whataboutism
  Wow. Fascinating. Thanks for the link.
  
  Yep that's exactly my point, the US is doing Whataboutism when it issues these PR stunts to condemn Chinese atrocities.
  
  "Whataboutism" can occasionally be an honest critique of a spurious argument.
  When it's just a link on it's own, it's almost always cover for hypocrisy.
- Hey, hey, hey...
  Korean War (3mil civilian dead)
  Vietnam War (2mil civilian dead)
  They at least got hit movies and TV shows! ;)
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAS*H_(film)
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAS*H_(TV_series)
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoon_(film)
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Metal_Jacket
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Beach
  
  If I had a nickle for everyone who either stopped watching Full Metal Jacket after Lee Emery gets shot or watched the husks of men, who just got massacred by a child defending her home, marching through the burning town while singing children's songs, and thanked the next veteran they met for fighting for freedom.
- WHATABOUT.
  Name a more iconic duo than tankies and misinformation.
- That shit gets brought up all the fucking time, in their own threads. Notice how people don't bring up Tiananmen Square, Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, the Uyghurs, or the many other atrocities the CCP has committed whenever an American atrocity gets mentioned.
  
  Your comment ignores the context that the US is doing anti-Chinese propaganda here, and there is no parity.
  Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot, and China was releasing PR statements on every anniversary of every US atrocity. They would still be issuing multiple statements every day.
  
  All the fucking time? Really? When was the last time the Coup d'état against Aristide was discussed around here?
- Most of that looks right, but
  Violent overthrow of East Timor (widely considered a genocide)
  Ok, this was Indonesia, with murican quiet assent, but still, don't give other countries a pass on these things to make them look clean.
  Many of these also involved the local elites going to the US for help. e.g. The draft UN resolution for the no-fly zone in Lybia was produced by the Arab League and backed by the African Union, which pressured russia and China not to veto it.
  
  It is not my intention to give other countries a pass. Indonesia is guilty of genocide in the case of East Timor; the US is guilty as well.
  The genocide in East Timor is analogous to the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
  Both genocides are not conducted by US personnel, but the majority of arms are supplied by the US. The US gives international legitimacy to the genocidal party, while running defense for it's atrocities. The genocide in East Timor was ended by a phone call from the US president, and I am of the firm belief that the genocide in Gaza could be ended by a similar call. Previous Israeli atrocities were ended by calls from Reagan and Bush Sr.
- Allowing the government to be taken over by fascists makes any "remembering" of horrific events pretty meaningless anyway. In the context of government, not individuals.
- Add to the list the US support of the Israeli war crimes currently going on in Gaza. Just yesterday they vetoed a ceasefire and delivery of aid proposition in the UN.
- People like you are evidence that Marxism is failed ideology that cannot be defended by it's own merits. You know it's a failure, which is why you resort to fallacies and misinformation.
- Hey, the difference is, you can post this list here, and nothing will happen to you.
  Become a Chinese citizen, and then post that single bullet item about the TS incident in China, on a Chinese social media. Then see what happens.
  
  That may be true, but it doesn't excuse the list at all.
  My country is responsible for the majority of international violence since WWII. I find that morally unacceptable.
  I make posts like this because I want my country to do better. But the sad reality is we have yet to learn our lesson. We have been aiding and abetting an ongoing Holocaust for almost two years now.
"Never forget" is great and all but from a German perspective it seems to not be enough. It is much more important to make sure the same or very similar things do not happen again, not by China and not by any other nation. Otherwise you end up like we did here in Germany where decades of "never forget" lead to very similar sentiments being expressed by a new major party but since things are slightly different (e.g. the "never forget" was always phrased to be about Jews, this is more about foreigners in general) people seem to allow themselves to ignore them.
- "Never again":
  ❌ "We must never do what we did to the Jews in WW2 again".
  ✅ "We can never allow what we did to the Jews in WW2 to happen again to anyone".
US currently working on ways to top it.
- That’s exactly what I was thinking. I feel like we’re months away at most
  
  Timing will be important. They'll want the big violence to break out next summer, so he can declare Martial Law, and suspend the 2026 Midterm election.
  America has never missed an election, even during the Civil War. Suspending an election is a big, bright red, flashing line. They do that, and it's on for real.
  
  The death toll of Tiannenmen riots is around 300. You would think it was 300.000 from the amound of posts we see about it.
  Current casualty count in Gaza is about 200 times higher than Tiannenmen.
Meanwhile Oklahoma telling kids the 2020 election was rigged under state law.
- Tankies and whataboutism, name a more iconic duo (pro tip: you can't)
  
  You say whataboutism, I say hypocrisy.
  
  whataboutism
  How to spot a shill for state propaganda.
Was genuinely thinking of walking in front of Trump’s military parade.
The capitalism capital of the world probably shouldn’t be preaching about human rights.
- Boy, you sure did get 'em. No pointing out bad behavior unless your history is unblemished, I guess.
  
  US history is a little more than unblemished, though. Hell, not even history. They are literally arming a genocidal state as we speak.
- Tankie bot says what now? Get lost.
  
  Every now and then I follow up and ask tankies what their actionable alternative is. They just never have one. Just making perfect the enemies of good. Tankies are deeply un-serious.
- Whataboutism.
- Taiwan?
- Lol you're the type of imbecile who would cry about Palestine and American imperialism, but then turn around and say shit like this. Marxists are a joke.
  
  You’re not making much sense.
This is just my personal experience:
_{I was talking to a few young Chinese. They were after born after the massacre happened.}
"Why are Hong Kong people are so full of themselves and rebellious? They think they are better? (Derogatory comments....", cheating among themselves, happily.
I couldn't help and interrupted, "Some young promising Hong Kong students were murdered, beaten and kidnapped under the mainland China. You can't blame them for not being defensive."
Immediately they resorted to their memorised response, "Do you have any resources to back up what you said? The official death count was zero."
Of course there was no "official" news resources. China suppresses the news media.
"It is the same as Tiananmen massacre. You won't find any "official resources " but everyone knows people were killed."
Another one retorted, "The official number is zero. What official resources you have to backup your claim?"
It was useless to talk anymore at that moment. I left. My encounter probably would be on their "report."
- I find it pretty rare to meet Chinese people like that. Most of the ones I meet know that stuff happened isn't that the government covered it up but they don't think that the government covering things up is all that unusual or newsworthy.
Let's not forget Faris Odeh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faris_Odeh
A picture of Odeh standing alone in front of a tank, with a stone in his hand and arm bent back to throw it, was taken by a photojournalist from the Associated Press on 29 October 2000. Ten days later, on 8 November, Odeh was again throwing stones at Karni when he was shot in the neck by an Israeli soldier.
- Why would any kid throw stones at armed soldiers? Where were his parents?
  
  Murdered by Israelis one would assume.
  
  careful, that doesn't fit the narrative
  
  Killed by Israeli.
Not contesting there was a violent crackdown, but didn’t the video for this moment end with the tank just stopping the entire time, the briefcase guy climbing onto the tank, then getting shuffled away by fellow civilians?
Everyday we see way worse shit happening on the streets of the US. Somehow the crackdown back then on anti-communist academics is an enshrined moment, but people on our streets getting arrested, detained, or killed is just business as usual.
And we also act like our country doesn’t call academics “indoctrinated”, beat the living crap out of both students and academics, and doesn’t want to kill them. Amazing.
- The were about 8000 people killed iirc. I once saw on reddit a link to a photo archive of the day and especially night. There were some very explicit photos. Like intestines falling out of opened bellies and bodies with half a head left.
  
  I think I know the pictures you mean and those were PLA soldiers lynched by the mob before the tanks started rolling in.
  
  Pretty sure the range is unknown to this day, and 8k is incredibly excessive. The British ambassador that claimed 10k revised it to around 3k and even that was high compared to corroborating reports
- You're actually delusional if you think anything like the Tiananmen square massacre is happening in the US today.
  
  Its far worse, seppoland has actual concentration camps at the border and ~~secret~~ plainclothes police disappearing people into torture prisons in foreign countries. Also funding, arming and running political cover for a genocide. Why just today it vetoed a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. And thats just whats currently going on off the top of my head.
  If we look at US history however we can find stuff like throwing a bomb on their own civilians and just one genocide after another.
- Everyday we see way worse shit happening on the streets of the US. Somehow the crackdown back then on anti-communist academics is an enshrined moment, but people on our streets getting arrested, detained, or killed is just business as usual.
  If it's condensed down to a day then it's easy to bleat about it since you can point to a single day "where it all happened". If you spread out the injustice, like instituting unjust laws bill-by-bill, increasing police funding, and ramping up media rhetoric on how crime is out of control and that we need politicians who are "tough on crime" then you get something like the most imprisoned population on Earth, but there isn't a single focal point to point at, instead multiple contributing factors, so it doesn't stick out as much.
  
  Agreed, I was hoping to bring attention to the fact that beyond a short attention span, you’d see comparable if not exceeding levels of historic violence
downvotes are from tankies
You could pick so many more things to criticize China for especially from its past, verifiable events, yet the west always picks Tiananmen Square, making sure to pick the image of the guy standing in front of the tank, but somehow always forgets to show the video of the guy climbing on top of the tank, asking soldiers to turn around to where the protesters are, and somehow forget mentioning that literally half the casualties were soldiers that were set ablaze. Even diplomatic cables at the time either leaked or declassified prove that.
- The Tiananmen square massacre is a verified event. We literally have videos and pictures documenting the entire massacre. How much of an idiot do you have to be to believe low level Chinese propaganda about this being fake or a good thing?
  
  So where are said videos of the massacre happening
- Whataboutism
- the guy was blocking the tanks from leaving tiananmen square too
- The most intriguing alt-history stuff I've read about it was that the protesters were "lefties" protesting the Dengist attempts at liberalization and confucianist reform, because in one of the videos the protesters were singing socialist anthems e.g. 1st international. It looked like the last gasp of the cultural revolution. But I'm not sure how to check any of this (certainly not from the Chinese archives and the rest of the world only has videos...and the cables you mention), it's probably just another bullshit story to cover up what happened.
Love the propaganda around this. Its very dramatic and all. But here in the west its held up as some big thing. The rest of the video never gets played.
- Especially this video where the 'students' hijacked a tank and fired it.
- in china they censor it on internet searches. thats why alot of thier netizens use proxies and anti-detect browsers.
Maybe I'll take Taiwan's word on this one...
Whatever the US says, you just know it's posturing hypocritical bullshit
Never forget when the CIA organised an armed color revolution which resulted into people shooting at the Chinese military. The clashes outsider of the square, not on it as the name suggests, resulted in a total of around 300 deaths.
Tiananmen has to be the dumbest propaganda pount because it is so incredibly easy to debunk for anyone who has basic access to a search machine. The CIA literally admitted they backed the riots.
The sheer hypocrisy of posting this while the American government is arming a live streamed genocide with over 60.000, likely more than 200.00p killed.
- Yeah, everything bad is the CIA's fault! A one-party dictatorship would never violently suppress dissent, and anyone saying otherwise is a paid shill!
  
  "Students" hahaha. Nice of you to leave out that the rioters started attacking the police first and literally burned police officiers alive. The peaceful protesters at the square were not attacked.
  There are actual events you can point to in which China represses their population. This is probably the dumbest one because extreme restraint was shown from the Chinese authorities.
  If it was America the guy blocking the tank from leaving the square would have been run over. And you would probably be screaming fafo.
My favorite thing to do is to watch liberals read the (very western biased) Wikipedia article on this event. The moment when they realize how many soldiers were killed before the crackdown is always radicalizing for those with even a modicum of intellectual curiosity.
- This sounds like how conservatives rationalize the Kent State massacre by claiming that the protesters were throwing feces.
  You're not radicalized. You just switched which authoritarian you swear fealty to.
  
  It would be different if the protesters had lynched a dozen soldiers before they responded.
  Of course given the context of the Vietnam war, the soldiers wouldn't have been justified even if the protesters killed some of them first; you don't get to claim self-defense when you yourself are only there to put down a protest against imperialism.
  
  Reminds me of Hillsborough and “some fans”.
- I only see wiki reference 10 soldiers having died - is this the number you're referring to?
  Do you think that's alot? In my head that's disproportionately few compared to the [disputed] 100s of civilians that the Chinese government declared dead
  
  According to the linked page with PLA/PAP casualties, there were 15 verifiable deaths (PRC official number is 23). Half of them weren't directly caused by the protesters, and the other half occurred after troops first opened fire. Truly, I feel quite radicalized.
- According to the official numbers there were ten civilians killed for every state agent of oppression.
- Killing the villainous authoritarian ork creature CCP is always virtuous and good and needs to be celebrated.
  Stopping a tank in front of an unarmed bicyclist until police pull him out of the way is unforgivable genocide.
  
  I had to do it, these people don't even read their own fake sources.
- Liberals are hardly better than the conservatives in the US. They all seem to be naive right wingers.
I'm confused, I thought June 5th was the taboo 'tank day'?
- The massacre was on June 4th, and Tank Man was on the 5th. The involvement of the military lasted several days and the protests had been going on for a couple months.
Everyone should read this
https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs
- Reading this whole thing never gets easier
Oh is this the terrible bad country we shipped our entire industrial base to?
Kent State says what?
- No no no. This anniversary is about how communism is bad.
Free West Taiwan! Someday, the White Sun will rise above Peking.
I’m surprised trump didnt try to give Taiwan away by tweet yet
The US won't "forget" unless China pays the Dipshit-in-chief some payoff money. He'll then EO that it never happened.
Narrator: “It did.”
damn propaganda in all its glory

195 comments