Bleeding Edge

The Butcher Of Beijing is dead…

Former Chinese Premier Li Peng has died in the government compound in Beijing long time after tens of thousands of students, workers, & pro-Democracy and pro-Liberty protesters were killed by his orders back in 1989.

Li Peng the butcher of Beijing outlived his hundreds of thousands of victims by a whole three decades — enough time to suffer from his memories until he died yesterday.

Li Peng had held many senior government positions in Communist China in the 1970s, 1980s, and in the 1990s. He died on Monday evening from an unspecified illness, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Xinhua described Li Peng as a “time-tested and loyal communist soldier, and an outstanding proletarian revolutionist, statesman and leader of the Party and the state.”

However, it was Li Peng’s role in the ultimate decision to send soldiers to clear Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4th and 5th of 1989, that was “the putsch” that took the power away from then ailing leader Deng Xiao Ping, and thus came for Li Peng to make the final call, and that is why Li Peng is rightly now called “The Butcher of Beijing” by the people, who know the truth in all things.

History also has judged that Li Peng deserved this name because back in May 1989, as the pro-democracy protests gained strength in Tiananmen Square, Li angrily told students at a meeting that “The situation will not develop as you wish and expect.”

A day later, he told the public in a televised address that he was declaring martial law.

After 30 Years Of Amnesia, Remembering A Forgotten Tiananmen square jives with Li’s declaration that paved the way for troops to descend upon the peaceful protesters amongst those who died to defend Liberty and Democracy. Tens of thousands of people died, and although the government has never released a death toll and suppresses any discussion of the bloody incident — the mass graves of Tiananmen are legendary in their size and depth.

Today, the level of Chinese digital and physical censorship is so high, that the image of a man standing in front of a tank – one of the most iconic photographs ever taken – is completely blocked and totally unfamiliar to the people of China.

A solitary figure in a white shirt and black trousers clutches a bag and stands in front of a column of halted tanks, a cluster of street lights floating to one side like balloons. The man’s shoulders are rounded, almost passive in front of the four tanks whose gun barrels are raised as if in an ironic salute.

Thirty years on from the violent crushing of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, the tank man’s identity remains unknown, and it is most certain that he is not alive long after the iconic photo was taken. But the photograph that captured his solitary moment of dissent in June 1989 remains one of the most memorable images of the last century, known universally as Tank Man.

Every Tank Man photo has a secret quality because the Man looks more vulnerable, and fragile since he is a common man asking a simple question to the soldiers:

“Why are you doing this?”

My feeling is that this guy had no concern for his safety. He was fed up and just didn’t care. He just wanted answers…

On the 30th anniversary of the protests, we recall that the picture of the Tank Man was taken, on the 5th of June 1989, and that the man was later shot dead by the Chinese secret police…

Tanks massed in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 as the Chinese authorities under orders from Premier Li Peng aligned their forces in order to crush the pro-Liberty students’ demonstrations in a bloody crackdown.

At a time of huge political turmoil in 1989 all over the world, with the Soviet Union’s collapse and the Berlin wall toppling, the unknown Chinese man’s face-off with the tanks came after weeks of demonstrations calling for democratic reforms that had rocked the capital of China Beijing, and with protesters on hunger strikes starting to occupy Tiananmen Square on the 13th of May 1989, asking politely for Liberty and a small measure of Democracy.

Within days they were more than a million strong, all of them milling inside the vast Square at the center of Beijing.

Upon the orders of Premier Li Peng, the People’s Liberation Army was sent in on the 4th of June with a whole armored division of soldiers and tanks, who opened fire indiscriminately on the protesters, thus killing and injuring many tens of thousands amongst the young people of Beijing occupying the Tiananmen square’s center.

In a public diary entry about that time, Premier Li Peng, maintained that he “firmly stood on the right side of the line with Comrade Deng Xiaoping.” And of course, China’s Communist Party leadership doubled down on its support behind Li Peng’s martial law approach to the 1989 Tiananmen Democracy protests in its official state obituary on Tuesday.

It said that at that time, Li Peng “took decisive measures to stop the unrest and quell the counter-revolutionary riots.” His decisions, the official obituary stated, “stabilized the domestic situation and played an important role in this major struggle concerning the future of the party and the country.”

“Bearing Witness Is Really All We Have” is a folio of the collective memories of covering the Tiananmen Square military attacks, murderous rage, and the burial of the protesters in mass unmarked graves — is the bloody aftermath and the only truthful account of what happened…

The Chinese Communist government’s staunch support for the deadly crackdown comes during tense times for China’s leadership, as mass protests in semi-autonomous Hong Kong against Beijing continue to intensify, and as the Uigur peoples’ Muslim majority is rounded up, and concentrated in the reeducation camps all over northern China to remain there and be “recivilized” for years to come…

Still, the glowing celebration of Premier Li Peng’s legacy within mainland China suggests Beijing isn’t willing to back down in 2019, against Chinese minorities, or the students, or the workers, or even the Hong Kong pro-Democracy & pro-Liberty protesters…

They give stern warning to all that a bloody crackdown is as much imminent today as it was back then on the early days of that bloody June of 1989, as presided over by the “Butcher of Beijing.”

What can you say?

Communists are communists, and a few tens of thousands of dead protesters for Freedom & Democracy — are simply a statistic in their minds, and an anomaly in their hearts.

No Heart.

No Conscience.

No Remorse, of any kind.

Just another bloody communist… who is now dead, thirty years after his many thousands of victims died in pain back in Tiananmen square on that bloody night of June 4th of 1989…

Cheers for the fallen soldiers of Liberty who died not in vain in Tiananmen square.

May your memory never be erased.

R.I.P.

Yours,

Dr Churchill

PS:

While Li Peng will be remembered internationally for the brutal and bloody legacy of the military tanks ordered to unleash their might by running over people with bloody and gummed up with human gristle tracks, lording it over Tiananmen Square — in China his economic strategy will likely rise to the fore, and he will be revered and remembered as pious leader, for as long as the Communists stay in power.

Because it was during his time as premier, that the economy grew considerably, the average lower class living standards improved, and the role of private businesses dramatically expanded — he is given kudos for achievements other than killing hundreds of thousands of people…

Indeed, Li implemented major economic reform, such as creating special economic zones and transforming a largely rural country into one of the biggest economies in the world.

Still, Li never received the historical acclaim and prestige that other leaders of his era, such as economic reformer and Li’s successor, Zhu Rongji, attained.

Li also strongly advocated for placing the Muslim minorities into the concentration & reeducation camps and he also pushed for the construction of the massive Three Gorges Dam, a giant infrastructure project to build a powerful hydroelectric dam across the Yangtze River. It displaced more than 1.4 million people and continues to be marred by environmental and construction issues.