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

(www.bbc.co.uk)
362 points ComputerGuru | 2 comments | 23 Dec 17 12:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.502s | source
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votepaunchy ◴[23 Dec 17 13:20 UTC] No.15994045[source]▶
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.“

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bartread ◴[23 Dec 17 13:26 UTC] No.15994065[source]▶
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.

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hux_[dead post] ◴[23 Dec 17 13:59 UTC] No.15994173[source]▶
Yup in contrast the American regime has about 1000x [1] the death toll but at least those people weren't bulldozed and it didn't make you and me feel too bad. Calling the other side evil is easy. Spotting hypocrisy is easy. Doing something about hyprocisy is much harder. It involves admitting to ourselves that all of us are capable of doing dumb shit.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes

ceejayoz ◴[23 Dec 17 14:12 UTC] No.15994207[source]▶
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.

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1. fastball ◴[23 Dec 17 14:30 UTC] No.15994268[source]▶
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.
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2. ceejayoz ◴[23 Dec 17 14:32 UTC] No.15994285[source]▶
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.