Bleeding Edge

The June 4th incident otherwise known as the Tiananmen Square massacre of the students in 1989 was the biggest revolution for Democracy China has ever known… and it resulted in massive death and persecution and the return to a tyrannical oligarchical Communist system of totalitarian one party ruthless rule.

The Tiananmen Square protests, commonly known in mainland China as the June Fourth Incident (Chinese: 六四事件, liùsì shìjiàn) or Six four, were worker & student-led demonstrations in Beijing in mid 1989 that was the popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests during that period, sometimes called the ’89 Democracy Movement (Chinese: 八九民运, bājiǔ mínyùn).

The protests were forcibly suppressed after the government declared martial law and sent in the military to occupy central parts of Beijing. In what became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, troops with assault rifles and tanks fired at the demonstrators trying to block the military’s advance towards Tiananmen Square. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred thousands to as low as 26,000 with many more additional hundred of thousands of demonstrators wounded, arrested, exported to concentration camps and exiled internally for long periods of time.

Set off by the death of pro-reform Communist leader Hu Yaobang in April 1989, amid the backdrop of rapid economic development and social changes in post-Mao China, the protests reflected anxieties about the country’s future in the popular consciousness and among the political elite. The reforms of the 1980s had led to a nascent market economy which benefited some people but seriously disaffected others, and the one-party political system also faced a challenge of legitimacy. Common grievances at the time included inflation, corruption, limited preparedness of graduates for the new economy, and restrictions on political participation. The students called for democracy, greater accountability, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech, although they were highly disorganized and their goals varied.

The Tiananmen Square massacre of Democracy in 1989 China, still grips that nation in fear of truth, fear of liberty, and most importantly, fear of its people rising up and demanding their God given rights of Free Will and of the Free Disposition of Self.

The 1989 Tiananmen Square June 4th massacre was presaged by the “Tiananmen Square protests” colloquially known as the 1989 “Tiananmen Square massacre,” were a part of the Student Chinese democracy movement blossoming in 1989, as the spread of anti-communist revolutions of 1989 erupted at the end of the Cold War.

This trend along with the death of Hu Yaobang, whose economic reforms gave hope for the young students, caused them to rise up against the runaway inflation, against political corruption, nepotism, and because of their wish to represent themselves, as the third wave of democracy clashed with totalitarianism amongst the other anti-communist revolutions of 1989, that were taking place in all of the European countries that were previously enslaved by the Communist ideology, and by the Red Army all over the place and amongst the satellite nations of the old Soviet union and elsewhere.

Yet in China’s Beijing, the rebellious students had a few concrete goals, and demands, shy of any revolution. They had such simple demands, such as the end of corruption within the Communist Party, democratic reforms, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc, that it seemed like a sit-in at a University campus, seeking simple dialogue and understanding by their elders…

Their methods were all peaceful, and when they found out that they will not be heard — they started with some hunger strikes, a longer term sit-in, and they progressed with the “occupation” of the public spaces of the square.

Instead of a dialogue, the authorities issued proclamations pagans the students, that soon enough resulted in the enforcement of a state of martial law, that was declared by Premier Li Peng in Beijing, and was executed by provincial country bumpkin units who used violent armed force, in a bloody mayhem from the evening of 3rd of June 1989 (Martial Law was declared from 20 May 1989 – 10 January 1990, 7 months and 3 weeks) until pretty much whoever remained in the square amongst the demonstrators and the students, was pretty much dead and buried in the same square in makeshift mass graves.

Up to today… those graves remain undisturbed and unidentified, with military police supervising the Square 24/7/365 for the last three decades and counting.

The fate of the various assembled protesters who were mainly workers, students, and rioters who had started barricading as were attacked by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops, is that all of them were killed. In addition, all nearby civilians who were deemed threatening as witnesses and bystanders, were also killed through rapid fire machine-guns, and with tanks running over them. These frontier army mechanized infantry units, were brought to the Square, by the PLA and they entered the Tiananmen Square at all the multiple gates of the square in order to pen in the students and the workers and crush them completely without offering any avenues or exits of escape.

The killing lasted throughout the night all around the Tiananmen square and the surrounding districts, and throughout central Beijing, and extended in the various neighborhoods radiating out to the suburbs.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters were killed, with many more thousands wounded inside and outside of Tiananmen Square, on the 3rd of June and on the 4th of June after the first civilians started to be killed on the early hours of the 3rd of June leading to the 4th of June.

There were a few more protests across China in reaction to the crackdown, but were all put down violently and exceedingly fast.

The protest leaders and the pro-democracy activists who survived the massacre, were later arrested, exiled in concentration camps, or imprisoned for long terms at the political enemies jails, or at the re-education camps, and all of the major protesters, and leaders of the student and worker movement for Democracy, were charged with violent crimes and were executed in the following months.

Zhao Ziyang was purged from General Secretary and Politburo positions and was placed under house arrest. Jiang Zemin, previously Party Secretary of Shanghai, was promoted to General Secretary and paramount leader, by Deng Xiaoping.

Western economic sanctions and arms embargoes on the People’s Republic of China
were enacted and although no precise figures exist, because of China’s denial of the Massacre — estimates vary from hundreds of thousands to twenty six thousands of dead protesters.

It is important to state that at the height of the protests, before the military’s crackdown of June 4th, there were upwards of One (1) million people assembled in the Square, and that explains the high number of casualties in this massive open air occupation of the square, when the tanks rolled in and crushed the people…

Because as the protests developed, the authorities responded with both conciliatory and hardline tactics, exposing deep divisions within the party leadership. By May, a student-led hunger strike galvanized support for the demonstrators around the country, and the protests spread to some 400 cities. Ultimately, China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and other Communist Party elders believed the protests to be a political threat and resolved to use force.[14][15] The State Council declared martial law on May 20 and mobilized as many as 300,000 troops to Beijing. The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city’s major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of June 4, killing both demonstrators and bystanders in the process.

The international community, human rights organizations, and political analysts condemned the Chinese government for the massacre. Western countries imposed arms embargoes on China. The Chinese government made widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, suppressed other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists, strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press, strengthened the police and internal security forces, and demoted or purged officials it deemed sympathetic to the protests. More broadly, the suppression halted the policies of liberalization in the 1980s. Considered a watershed event, the protests set the limits on political expression in China up to the present day. Its memory is widely associated with questioning the legitimacy of Communist Party rule and remains one of the most sensitive and most widely censored topics in China.

Sadly to this day, China does not want to face the Truth…

Yours,

Dr Churchill

PS:

Is it because the Communist system is so tyrannical that is afraid of telling it’s own citizens the truth about their past?

As for the fate of this lone demonstrator stopping the tanks — it has been confirmed that he was killed and placed in an unmarked grave by the Communist army’s mechanized infantry.

His remnants have been fertilizing the Tiananmen Square’s flower beds for the last 30 years to this day.

RIP brother fighter for Freedom and Democracy.

RIP courageous liberator.

RIP my brother, keeper of the undying flame of Liberty.

RIP my beacon of Hope for the Chinese people of today.

And may the soil that covers your body always be light and always may it bring about, the most fragrant flowers of that beautiful square.

And may your memory far outlast the Communist tyrants that are responsible for your death and for so much bloodshed during this awful massacre of 1989…

Yet, you should know that I am certain that you will always live in our memories and in the human book of Liberty and Democracy, for ever — long after the Chinese Communist party and it’s peons have all have bitten the dust.