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

> The figure was given in a secret diplomatic cable from then British ambassador to China, Alan Donald.

> Mr Donald's telegram is from 5 June, and he says his source was someone who "was passing on information given him by a close friend who is currently a member of the State Council".

Here we have a telegram by a guy (British Ambassador) who heard from a guy (unknown) who heard from a guy (unknown State Council) facts about the events of the day prior (massacre was on June 4th). Where did the unknown State Council official get his estimates from; were those official or just something he heard and repeated (and when did he get them)? Initial estimates of disasters are often quite wrong; here they were produced in game of telephone in a day or less; and they are not collaborated by any evidence we have now.

I rank the quality of new evidence as low. Rumors repeated in old official telegrams are still rumors. I expected BBC to have reported more critically. Alan Donald is still alive; BBC could have asked him if he received any updates to that first number that he trusted more.

I also have to fault BBC for it's phrasing around Donald's source. At first reading it sounded like Donald's source is an unnamed member of the State Council who is a close friend of the Ambassador. After reading BBC's sentence a carefully however; it sounds like the Donald's source is a person who is a friend of an unnamed member of the State Council. This ambiguous sentence is deceptive.

EDIT: I see vote count moving up and down on this comment making me think it is controversial. If you disagree with my doubts on the veracity of this story, write a comment. Maybe I missed something.

The problem with demanding better sourcing and information about this event is that has been brutally suppressed for thirty years. The attitude you espouse, while normally the correct one, here only serves the interests of the censors to suppress the truth.

The Chinese government should certainly be judged based on rumors such as these, until they open up their archives and allow free investigation of the events.

In terms of the source, on a side note, I personally know people who were on the square that day, and later escaped to the US to seek asylum under Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992 [1]. They have a lot of first-hand information and photographs, but wouldn't release them to media because they still have families live in China, and as a consequence of release those information, PRC may reject their entry in the future. To most of the people getting the truth out to the world doesn't outweigh the freedom of visiting families and friends, which is reasonable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Student_Protection_Act...

Is there any effort to collect those photos/accounts for later release, say after the person's death?

I understand the reluctance for them release publicly right now, but it would be a shame if it was all effectively lost because of that.