Sunday, June 04, 2006

The Tiananmen Square Massacre

Today is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Slate has an interesting photo essay and here is a gut-wrenching video which is well worth seeing (both via Instapundit).

(Photo: Jeff Widener - The Associated Press; source)
The victims' families and the world are still waiting for China to face up to its past.

1 comment:

bobby fletcher said...

I'd like to offer couple references in addition to PBS Frontline's "The Tank Man", where it reported the fact students were allowed to leave peacefully once the troops arrived, and Chinese government did investigate this, and release casualty figure of 240 some dead (incidentally in-line with our own NSA intel estimate.)

An article by Gregory Clark on pack journalism:

http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/7702519.html

"the so-called massacre was in fact a mini civil war as irate Beijing citizens sought to stop initially unarmed soldiers sent to remove students who had been demonstrating freely in the square for weeks. When the soldiers finally reached the square there was no massacre."

An article by Columbia Journal Review on passive 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.
...
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.]