what happened here?

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    On the offchance that you’re actually here in good faith. The pop history belief in the west is that a bunch of unarmed innocent protestors were brutally massacred inside the square, this is false and no deaths of protestors occurred in the square. What actually went down is protestors murdered two unarmed negotiators and burned them alive sparking off things turning nasty, a military column then got ransacked and some protestors armed themselves. What followed were dozens of hours of battles across different streets in which hundreds of PLA and armed protestors died. I could post images of these burned negotiators but I’ll leave that to you to look up, they’re not hard to find and I don’t think it adds value to a historic discussion to post the gore when what matters is the version of events.

    I can do this two ways for you, I can show it with western liberal sources or I can show it with socialist sources. I’ll give you both.

    The Telegraph lays it out pretty reasonably in this article in my opinion, and since it’s a right wing tory rag so I assume no liberals are gonna accuse it of it being “commie propaganda” lmao.

    But don’t just take that as the only example. How about we also look back at old articles written at the time it actually occurred?

    CBS NEWS: “We saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a “massacre” had occurred in [Tiananmen Square]”

    BBC NEWS: “I was one of the foreign journalists who witnessed the events that night. There was no massacre on Tiananmen Square”

    NY TIMES: In June 13, 1989, NY Times reporter Nicholas Kristof – who was in Beijing at that time – wrote, “State television has even shown film of students marching peacefully away from the [Tiananmen] square shortly after dawn as proof that they [protesters] were not slaughtered.” In that article, he also debunked an unidentified student protester who had claimed in a sensational article that Chinese soldiers with machine guns simply mowed down peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square.

    REUTERS: Graham Earnshaw was in the Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3. He didn’t leave the square until the morning of June 4th. He wrote in his memoir that the military came, negotiated with the students and made everyone (including himself) leave peacefully; and that nobody died in the square.

    A Wikileaks cable from the US Embassy in Beijing (sent in July 1989) also reveals the eyewitness accounts of a Latin American diplomat and his wife: “They were able to enter and leave the [Tiananmen] square several times and were not harassed by troops. Remaining with students … until the final withdrawal, the diplomat said there were no mass shootings in the square or the monument.”


    If instead of me using western major news sources to support my point you’d somehow still want this from my communist perspective. These three pieces are pretty good:

    https://redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen/

    https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/

    https://archive.ph/24zzF


    As for these tanks themselves. The video is of them leaving the square, and when held up like this I think they demonstrated a degree of restraint you wouldn’t see from any western military anywhere in the world.

      • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        sorry but your post was the embodiment of the very-intelligent/fedposting archetype.

        If you wrote a polite question like “What happened in June 1989 in Tienanmen Square, is the tank man photo real?” or “What is the origin of this picture?” then you’d get a polite response.

        No one is obligated to be nice to you if you’re not respectful back.

        • WhiskeyOaks [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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          4 months ago

          And yall don’t need to start every interaction by being a massive douchebag and acting like everyone is out get you. The actual language of my question is pretty innocuous (though, perhaps less so given the context of the instance, but still).

          If I asked if it was real, I would get answers biased by belief in the events legitimacy. I’m also not going to ask what the origins are as I already know where the image comes from. By very purposely asking such a vague question, I’m openly inviting people answer with the information that they deem important to the context of this image. By asking in this way and in this instance specifically, I have the greatest chance to learn and stumble into some new information. As with all things, there are extremely polarized opinions about Tianamen Square, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

  • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Lmao, are you the person from that blahaj thread who said they were “toying” with the idea of coming here to own us with a picture from 1989?

    Have you watched the video?

    EDIT: Your account age is exactly as old as this comment.