[bootlegga]

Tiananmen Square survivor reflects 30 years later: "I'm heartbroken"

$1:

On June 4, 1989, Chinese tanks rolled into Beijing's Tiananmen Square to crush a student-led protest movement calling for greater political freedom. To this day, the death toll remains in dispute, but it is believed thousands may have been killed.

CBS News' senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer returned to Tiananmen Square 30 years later, to find its bloody history erased by modern China.

Wu'er Kaixi, who at the time was 21 and was one of the main student leaders of the protests, managed to escape the violence.

"I am the survivor of a massacre," he told Palmer. "I have to live with the guilt."

Although he and the students knew the government was threatened by demands for reform, he said, he thought there was "no way" it would come to "real ammunition and tanks rolling over people."

"You never dreamed it would come to that?" Palmer asked.

"No, no, no, no," he responded.

Tiananmen Square is now a tourist attraction under 24/7 surveillance. Clusters of cameras, for example, are disguised as lamp posts. And the square has been completely scrubbed of anything that might recall the events of 1989.

In fact, the government has so successfully written them out of history, that some young people didn't recognize the most famous Tiananmen picture of a man standing in front of a column of tanks.

"[The] Communist party is extremely nervous about people learning the fact of what happened, which is people stood up and challenged the government," Wu'er Kaixi said.

To make sure it never happened again, the party introduced sweeping economic changes that transformed China into a dynamic power. But at its core, it remains an authoritarian police state.

"We failed miserably," he said. "Let's face it, they are exchanging our economic freedom with our political freedom."

The young idealist paid a personal price: he spent the next three decades in exile.

"I haven't been able to see my parents for the last 30 years," he said, adding "I cannot go back to China and they denied them traveling abroad."

"That's quite a price to pay," Palmer said.

"I'm heartbroken for that," he responded.

He's also heartbroken for the reform movement, once so full of hope, that's now utterly crushed.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tiananmen- ... artbroken/

Hard to believe it's been 30 years...

[xerxes]

Never forget:

[BartSimpson]

Nothing has changed in China. Even CNN got treated to a dose of authoritarianism today.

[BartSimpson]

And I continue my boycott of Wal Mart which forces American companies to produce products with Chinese slave labor.

[bootlegga]

One of the most amazing videos ofthe 20th century IMHO.

[llama66]

Tank man is one of the greatest photos ever taken. To stare down and block a column of T-72's in an act of defiance like that is truly heroic. I'm sure the MSS rewarded him with a bullet.

[BRAH]

Tiananmen's tank man: The image that China forgot

$1:

It has become the defining image of China's Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 - one man standing in the way of a column of tanks, a day after hundreds, possibly thousands, had been shot dead.

But 30 years on, the Chinese authorities continue to try to erase all memory of the time when they almost lost their grip on power.

To test the effectiveness of the censorship, the BBC's John Sudworth took to the streets of Beijing to find out how many people recognise Tank Man today.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-48476879/tiananmen-s-tank-man-the-image-that-china-forgot
_____________________________

This is what real political resistance looks like, never forget.

[Freakinoldguy]

If you want to know what really happened at Tienanmen Square i'd suggest reading Red China Blues. It's written by a Chinese Canadian woman who went to live and go to a Beijing school in Mao's paradise and her subsequent change from Maoist to realist. But, the most interesting part is that after she finished school and began to see communism for what it was she returned to Canada but was talked into going back to China as a reporter for a major Canadian newspaper before the Tienanmen Square massacre.

So, given her friends and her ability to blend in like a local in Beijing it gave her a special insight and opportunity to see things no outsiders saw or were allowed to report. And, if she's right, when the Chinese gov't and western media give you the number of deaths take it with a grain of salt along with the myth that it was only the "students" who staged the protest while the rest of the city stayed restive and loyal to the Gov't.

For years we've been fed a line of bull about Tienanmen square but for some odd reason nobody but this woman apparently wants to offend the Chinese gov't by calling them out on the real numbers of dead, how they died and the people who rose up in opposition to their draconian rule.

[Strutz]

Unreal that it has been 30 years already. I remember those images so well.


One of those times that obviously the Chinese government would rather not let people acknowledge or remember, except as a lesson to not pull that "rights" stuff again.

[BartSimpson]

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

If you want to know what really happened at Tienanmen Square i'd suggest reading Red China Blues. It's written by a Chinese Canadian woman who went to live and go to a Beijing school in Mao's paradise and her subsequent change from Maoist to realist. But, the most interesting part is that after she finished school and began to see communism for what it was she returned to Canada but was talked into going back to China as a reporter for a major Canadian newspaper before the Tienanmen Square massacre.

So, given her friends and her ability to blend in like a local in Beijing it gave her a special insight and opportunity to see things no outsiders saw or were allowed to report. And, if she's right, when the Chinese gov't and western media give you the number of deaths take it with a grain of salt along with the myth that it was only the "students" who staged the protest while the rest of the city stayed restive and loyal to the Gov't.

For years we've been fed a line of bull about Tienanmen square but for some odd reason nobody but this woman apparently wants to offend the Chinese gov't by calling them out on the real numbers of dead, how they died and the people who rose up in opposition to their draconian rule.

I suspect that a good number of our nascent socialists on this site would hate actual socialism if they had to live with it and if they had to deal with the kind of government that socialism requires.

At least one of these wide-eyed fools had her eyes opened to the reality of Marxism in all its glory.