Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

What did they do with all the bodies?

"Students linked arms but were mown down including soldiers. APCs then ran over bodies time and time again to make 'pie' and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains.“

Reading that made me feel physically sick, and then the line afterwards about the girls begging for their lives who were bayonetted. Just awful.

I have, and probably always will, find Chinese culture somewhat fascinating but I have no love for their political regime.

That's... not particularly hygienic.

I wonder if there was a heightened instance of disease in the area immediately afterward.

The Tank Man (1989) : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Tianasquare.j...

`An unknown protestor bravely stands in front of a column of armored tanks as an act of defiance against the Chinese government following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.`

`This photo is one of the most iconic images of the 20th Century and has since been widely used to represent the protests. It was a set of student-led popular demonstrations in Beijing which took place in the spring of 1989 aimed at exposing the deep splits within China’s leadership. It was also known as the ’89 Democracy movement. The protests were triggered in April 1989 by the death of a communist leader.`

Some more context behind the photographer who clicked the photo - https://pastebin.com/aGVLYDVz

This is a particularly political event so reports from both sides need to be treated with scepticism.

It doesn't sound terribly plausible as a disposal method to me. Not something I would believe without more sources / evidence.

What happened to the Tank Man, did he survive the protest?

Yes, comparing the entire history of American war crimes against one domestic incident in China will give you a much bigger American death toll number.

A fairer comparison would include Mao's killing of 45 million of his citizens.

Tu quoque?

Most of these were during wartime. Criminal and regrettable, of course. However, attacking your own citizens while protesting in your own cities somehow seems a bit different.

yup?

The difference is that we're trying to do something about it. Kids learn about many of the bad things America did (slavery, extermination of the native Americans, Vietnam war atrocities, nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, etc.). They're taking down civil war monuments all over the country. The same will happen with Columbus soon--Los Angeles has already renamed Columbus Day in favor of the indigenous people he exterminated, and there are proposals to do the same/take down Columbus monuments in Baltimore, D.C., New York, etc.

No one knows who he was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man

A couple things to unpack here:

Firstly, I'm not sure we're reading the same article, but by my summary count, the total death toll for all combined US war crimes detailed in that article isn't much more than 10,000.

Next, the veracity of some of those claims is questionable at best.

Finally, it should be noted that the Tiananmen Square protests, were, in fact, protests. This was not an action against civilians during war time, this was an action taken by a government against it's own citizens who were protesting.

Is killing unarmed soldiers or civilians in war time justified? Generally no. But it's a different type of crime when you're in the middle of a war zone. Humans don't deal well with the insane nature of war, and so they do horrible things. That's not an excuse, mind you. But I think collateral damage in a war and civilian casualties in a war zone are very different scenarios than Tiananmen Square.

Still not fair comparison, as these were also "their own". Not saying "us vs. them" is something to aspire to, but I think we can all agree that a military's responsibility to their own populace is a bit larger than their responsibility to an enemy populace.

Oh, for sure.

If the poster's gonna compare apples to oranges, though, they should at least compare the full apple instead of a tiny sliver of it.

You ever see the shock and awe videos of Baghdad? That our government approvingly worked with cable news to make sure everyone saw it? For an operation very much not endorsed by the UN or international community?

Good thing that's not a war crime, though.

Shock and awe was a brief bombing campaign that hit military and administrative buildings late at night when they were empty. I saw the buildings. They were not apartment blocks. If anyone died in that campaign it was purely by accident.

> You ever see the shock and awe videos of Baghdad?

The ones using precision munitions on generally evacuated government buildings?

You're really going to try comparing that to massacring unarmed protesters?

Yeah, those. Watch the video and tell me how bloodless it was. Or how it's not a massacre.

I'm not defending a thing about Tiananmen square, I'm just marvelling at the power of nationalism to excuse anything.

Bunch of snakes in suits with American flag pins declare a war for no reason, knowing that hundreds of thousands will die, but it's all Legitimate State Behavior. I'm sure it's a huge comfort to the orphans.

The crimes of one country don’t lessen the crimes of another. A government ordering the wholesale slaughter of its own citizens should be roundly condemned by all no matter what.

>This is a particularly political event so reports from both sides need to be treated with scepticism.

So basically, you don't like these facts so we must be skeptical of them?

These were not two hostile countries in a war of whataboutism like the US and USSR.

China ≠ USSR - this was long after the Sino-Soviet split and by the late 80s the UK and China had good relations.

The Sino-British Joint Declaration (which would return Hong Kong to China) was signed in 1984, and Queen Elizabeth made a visit in 1986.

Also, a photo released in 2009 of "Tank Man" from another angle clearly shows a bulldozer:

https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/behind-the-scenes-...

Larger image (direct link): https://static01.nyt.com/packages/flash/photo/Lens-Single-As...

It's not as if the US ever killed off a bunch of innocent people outside of war, and still ignores them when it doesn't suit their interests (see keystone XL pipeline):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigeno...

Exactly - part of America's heritage of a free, unusually aggressive, and intellectually combative free press (on both sides of the political spectrum) is that criticism of our government, history, and society is widely studied and disseminated, both domestically and abroad. Knowledge of American human rights injustices, ranging from slavery to Guantanamo Bay, is promoted, shared, taught in schools.

Looks pretty bloodless. Are there specific videos you're looking for me to peruse?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yr-LaMhvro

Now, the Iraq War and it's aftermath as a whole weren't bloodless, for sure. The "they'll greet us as liberators and there'll be a Western-style democracy in 90 days!" stuff was transparent bullshit.

Shock and awe was a specific bombing campaign, hitting palaces, military HQs, communications nexuses, etc. The targets chosen made it easy to avoid large numbers of civilian casualties, and trying to compare it to stuff like Tiananmen Square is just silly.

> So basically, you don't like these facts so we must be skeptical of them?

You appear to be uncritically accepting rumours on a leaked cable as a fact - instead I only urge caution on such emotional matters.

Were people run over? Were bodies moved by bulldozer? Those statements can be true without that particularly gruesome scene being accurate. It is its gruesomeness that makes me suspect - a property that makes urban legends infectious - the sensationalism outweighs the substance, evidence and rationality e.g. who saw it, when did it happen, how many people were subject to it, why was that a rational thing to do etc.

> These were not two hostile countries in a war of whataboutism like the US and USSR.

We are not discussing an official statement from the British government so geopolictical relationships are hardly relevant. Governments and civil services are full of agendas in every direction but more likely this is an embassy doing its job i.e. reporting on the various rumours circulating in the host nation.

The reason for caution is that people are describing their emotional reactions to these words without considering the grounds. At the best of times there is some pretty horrid anti-Chinese xenophobia on this board. People want the worst things to be true irrespective of evidence. US citizen's casually describe Russia and China as enemies today. Something you only have to say enough times for it to become true.

It should be noted that American schools teach plenty of revisionist history or gloss over the worst excesses.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/opinion/how-texas-teaches...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/150-years-lat...

https://jezebel.com/heres-how-new-texas-public-school-textbo...

not just America. growing up in Canada, exactly 0 minutes were dedicated to discussing treatment of First Nations peoples...noteworthy given that government's exceptionally awful history in that regard

Go ahead, downvote me. I was there mother fuckers.

It's interesting that you were there, but please don't break the site rules here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm more interested in hearing your story than downvoting you.

I grew up with that picture and I still get chills that persist for a full minute when I see it pop up again.

Huh. I went to public school in Ontario between 1987 and 2000 and all I ever learned about first nations people was how shitty they were treated. It was so often the point of our geography and canadian history lessons that I feel like the only thing I know about Canada's history is that they treated first nations poorly. It was so heavily reenforced that a lot of my schoolmates got empathy fatigue.

Where and when did you go to school in Canada?

> At the best of times there is some pretty horrid anti-Chinese xenophobia

No, at the best of times China is discussed as an exciting place where cool tech is happening.

Horrid xenophobia would be the worst of times. Or are you saying HN has something even worse than that for China?

As for people believing exaggerations about the Tiananmen Square Massacre: sorry, not sorry. If China wants there to be a measured and accurate public accounting of that then they can participate in the free and open discussion of that history. As long as they continue to murder or otherwise destroy the life of anyone who discusses it, the consequence is that people are forced to guess what happened. Too bad.