NationStates Jolt Archive

what do you think about this horrible massacre of innocent people?

what do you think about this horrible massacre of innocent people?

Actually, I'm kind of curious how much the average Chinese citizen knows about it, seeing as it is currently censored (there was a thread on that earlier as I recall).

what do you think about this horrible massacre of innocent people?
I happen to agree with System of a Down (http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/systemofadown/hypnotize.html) on this subject.

I happen to agree with System of a Down (http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/systemofadown/hypnotize.html) on this subject.
i love that song hypnotized, right?

i love that song hypnotized, right?
without the d, yes.

Pretty much what you said: that it was a horrible massacre of China's citizens who were the youngest, some of the brightest, and had the most potential. I would post that picture of the single man stopping a column of tanks, but I can't find it.

Equally condemnable to the Terror that followed the French Revolution.

Pretty much what you said: that it was a horrible massacre of China's citizens who were the youngest, some of the brightest, and had the most potential. I would post that picture of the single man stopping a column of tanks, but I can't find it.
Did he stop them or did they run him over? No one ever tells me or no video ever shows what happened.

It saved the PRC...at the same time Communism collapsed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and some Chinese students thought it was time for the same in China.

Looking at the state of Russia now and China now, I'd almost say the Chinese are better off for it. But only almost, because shooting innocent civilians is not on.

Did he stop them or did they run him over? No one ever tells me or no video ever shows what happened.

I believe he stopped them. I also believe that he "disappeared" a short time afterwords. It shouldn't require too much reasoning power to figure what happened to him, the iconic silent, nameless, and faceless martyr of the twenty-first cenutry.

It was a horrible act by the government of the PEOPLE'S Republic of China against its own people.

According to America the Book, the lone student in front of that tank was just an OCD sufferer who felt comfortable in front of large objects :)

It was a horrible act by the government of the PEOPLE'S Republic of China against its own people.

couldn't said it better myself...it was really an atrocity.

So then...what do you think about the Uzbek Version of it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2005_unrest_in_Uzbekistan

According to America the Book, the lone student in front of that tank was just an OCD sufferer who felt comfortable in front of large objects :)
You are tease. When I saw the line under America the Book, I though you were providing a link to the book.

According to America the Book, the lone student in front of that tank was just an OCD sufferer who felt comfortable in front of large objects :)


awesome book.

According to America the Book, the lone student in front of that tank was just an OCD sufferer who felt comfortable in front of large objects :)

Yeah john steward's book, right? that was funny

what do you think about this horrible massacre of innocent people?
often overlooked (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amritsar_Massacre)

what do you think about this horrible massacre of innocent people?I could understand getting Tiananmen a little wrong, but square? Come on dude.

what do you think about this horrible massacre of innocent people?

If it were not for the ruling elite's readiness to crush dissent in the 80s and 90s we would not now be reaping the benefits of cheap ISO-9000 manufacturing in China for foreign owned companies and being targetted at the western consumer market.

So then...what do you think about the Uzbek Version of it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2005_unrest_in_Uzbekistan
I think it's amazing how little media attention it provoked.

As for Tiananmen, as far as I know most Chinese are very apolitical and don't think about it much (life is healthier that way). I have a Chinese friend who didn't even realize that Mao Zedong was considered one of the worst dictators of the 20th century; she considered him a historic great leader until I sat her ass down at Wikipedia. Go go Chinese indoctrination!

what do you think about this horrible massacre of innocent people?
When I was younger I read the book 'Forbidden City' that about told me everything. And yeah the guy in front of the tanks?
He got executed later that day.

Hmmm..if only the workers and peasants had joined the protests, the outcome would have been different.

Oh well, there's always a next time.

Here's an interview by one of the student leader Wang Dan

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/05/cnn25.wang.tan/index.html

When I was younger I read the book 'Forbidden City' that about told me everything. And yeah the guy in front of the tanks?
He got executed later that day.

Actually the tank stopped and the boy got pulled away by his fellow protesters. No one can confirm what happened to the boy.

The tanks stopped? I always thought he was run over. Shows how much I know. It's amazing how we can let crap like this pass, but we'll invade countries that didn't even do anything we don't do in our own prisons.

Random note: Sel Appa's capital, Nemnenait, is Tianenmen spelled backwards.

It makes me laugh hahahahaahaha stupid students.... HAIL THE PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF CHINA (Also note that Maoism and Lennism/Stalinism (orthodoxy communism) are quiet different things)

Another often overlooked massacre was the Gwangju massacre in South Korea 1980. From 1948-1988 South Korea was a dictatorship and when the people rose up for democracy they were crushed.

There have been worst things done in history. It just seems to people that Tiananmen because of the association(sp) with Communism.

often overlooked (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amritsar_Massacre)
Yes, and that was terrible. People suck, period. All these self righteous folks don’t seem to understand that if they were in the same position as the killers, they would have done the same.

Ooh, since we're on overlooked massacres, what about the Tlatelolco massacre? Sharpeville?

All these self righteous folks don’t seem to understand that if they were in the same position as the killers, they would have done the same.

Huh?

It's None Of Our Buisness. I've Long Held A Stance To Never Interfer With Foriegn Affairs, Unless It Directly Threatens Us. Just Cause China Killed A Bunch Of Protesters Shouldn't Mean We Should Do Anything.

if you were watching it live on cnn when it happened i don't see how you could escape from noticing how the way it was being reported, what was being said and all that, was really forcing and provoking the issue. one that might well have gone on and been settled peacefully to everyone's gain and no one's loss had it not been, were it not being, premeditatedly provoked into violent conflict. at that, up untill the very last, even that was being held by remarkable self restraint on all sides by everyone other then the cnn administration and crew provoking it.

don't get me wrong. for what happened to the participants afterwords the chinese government is entirely culpable, but for what violence did occur DURING the event, for that i hold cnn and the perspective of its reportage entirely culpable.

=^^=
.../\...

It's None Of Our Buisness. I've Long Held A Stance To Never Interfer With Foriegn Affairs, Unless It Directly Threatens Us. Just Cause China Killed A Bunch Of Protesters Shouldn't Mean We Should Do Anything.

What's with the capitals?

What's with the capitals?

its a very long title.

Ooh, since we're on overlooked massacres, what about the Tlatelolco massacre? Sharpeville?
Armenian?

what do you think about this horrible massacre of innocent people?
Well, it was really horrible I guess. As massacres of innocent people go.

The pic:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y9/MAR-Peeves/Tianamen.jpg

-edited out-
What do I think about it? Not sure really.

I agree with what Cameroi said. While the Chinese have their fair share of the blame, especially after the event, alot of the fault of the actual event is on the reporters, as well as the demonstrators. Agree with their cause, but they weren't peaceful students randomly getting shot. Few died in the actual square itself. Most killed were workers, etc in the streets who were blocking off roads, throwing rocks and molotov cocktails, etc.

I think that while the premise for the thing was fine, the chinese had a right to disperse the demonstrators, and to do anything nessecary to accomplish their goals. You don't actively try to prevent a military from completing its objectives, unless you are willing to die.

Massacres help people realise what being human is really about.:cool:

Massacres help people realise what being human is really about.:cool:

Really? What is being human really about?

I remember following it on TV. I had just taken a class on Asia. My thinking at the time was that Deng would not crack down on the students because the whole world was watching so there would be a compromise and as soon as the cameras were off they would throw the instigators into a gulag.

I had (and have) a lot of admiration for the students' bravery though. They weren't violent or disrespectful. It seemed that all they were doing was politely asking their government for a redress of their grievances.

Deng was supposed to be the reformer. He was going around saying things like,"To be rich is glorious." Conventional wisdom was that China was on the verge of becoming more democratic and open. Businesses were salivating at the chance to compete in a market with a billion car-less, dishwasher-less, consumers. So there was a lot of hope that it was the beginning of the end for the old guard.

Tianenmen Square shut a lot of people up on those matters. I realized now how brave those people really were. Personally, whenever I think of China, my first thought is of Tianenmen Square and that brave/crazy guy standing in front of the tank.

It's None Of Our Buisness. I've Long Held A Stance To Never Interfer With Foriegn Affairs, Unless It Directly Threatens Us. Just Cause China Killed A Bunch Of Protesters Shouldn't Mean We Should Do Anything.

You.

Are.

Not.

Human.

Im not sure with this one

This is a good history of the massacre by the Australian Democratic Socialist Party. It is from the document The Class Nature of the Chinese State (look under DSP Documents at http://www.dsp.org.au/). All should read the book. It talks about how China has always been opposed to socialism and the workers.

In April 1989, students mourning the death of Deng's premier, Hu Yaobang (who was seen by intellectuals as the leading advocate of political liberalisation within the party's top leadership), poured into central Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Some 10,000 students assembled in the square and demanded entry to Zhongnanhai, the heavily guarded residential compound of China's top officials, to discuss political freedoms, education funding and the disclosure of the financial records of the top officials and their children.

On April 26 the regime's main press organ, the People's Daily , ran an editorial based on a statement by Deng which denounced the students as "hooligans" led by "evil" people intent on formenting "turmoil". In response, the students formed the Beijing Students' Autonomous Federation and the next day the number of demonstrators in the square reached 100,000. By early May, the social base of the demonstration broadened to include many office, shop and factory workers, with up to 150,000 in Tianamen Square each day.

In response the regime decided to change its tactics. Zhao Ziyang, with Deng's approval, made a conciliatory statement, calling the students' demands "reasonable" and urging a "democratic and legal" response. This statement was aimed at encouraging the dispersal of the demonstration, but it made the regime appear weak and divided and only caused the protest movement to spread to other cities.

On May 18, newly installed premier Li Peng held a nationally televised meeting with the students' representatives. When the student' representatives refused to backdown, Li stormed out the meeting, and the following day announced the imposition of martial law in Beijing. But as had happened with the April 26 editorial, this get-tough stand backfired. Tens of thousands of Beijing working-class residents came out to their neighbourhood intersections to block the advance of PLA units toward Tiananmen Square. The workers pleaded with the soldiers and their officers not to act against the student protesters. By and large the troops were sympathetic to these pleas. Meanwhile, at the top of the PLA, two marshals publicly praised the students' patriotism and seven other generals drafted a statement, signed by over a hundred senior officers, urging the PLA not to fire on the masses. In response, the military's advance through Beijing toward Tiananmen Square stopped.

On May 24, Zhao Ziyang resigned as party general secretary and the student leaders announced they would end their demonstration on May 30. The day before this, however, the most radical protest leaders -- mainly workers rather than students -- began to be arrested by the secret police. The arrests were triggered by a new development, one which galvanise the entire ruling bureaucracy behind Deng's demand for a military crackdown on the spreading protest movement.

On May 29, groups of workers began to demonstrate with a very different agenda from the students' demands. They focused on job security, wages, opposition to the burgeoning private enterprises, and the limitations on their power to control their workplaces. Where the students and intellectuals tended to see the solution to corruption and authoritarianism in further steps toward political liberalisation and privatisation of the economy, the workers were more inclined to think that excessive "market reform" and lack of worker power in the factories were undermining the social gains they had made under the nationalised, planned economy. Where the students had erected the "goddess of democracy", combining aspects of the traditional benevolent Chinese deity Guanyin and the US Statue of Liberty, the workers marched under portraits of Mao.

Moreover, the workers' demonstrations were accompanied by the ruling bureaucracy's worst nightmare: workers began to form independent associations to agitate for their demands and the most radical protesters in Tiananmen Square -- mostly workers -- declared they would stay in the square until June, when the next session of China's nominal legislature, the National People's Congress, was due to convene next door in the Great Hall of the People.

In the face of the workers' challenge, the ruling bureaucracy closed ranks and the PLA was ordered to crush the Tiananmen Square protest.

The vast majority of the estimate 1000 people killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre of the night of June 3-4, 1989 were not student protesters in the square itself, but workers in the encampments at major intersections ringing the square. And in the police crackdown that followed the regime made a clear distinction between the student and worker leaders. In an effort not to alienate the intellectuals too much from the regime, the student leaders who were caught were given jail terms. The 50 or so workers' leaders who were caught, however, were summarily executed.

I remember following it on TV. I had just taken a class on Asia. My thinking at the time was that Deng would not crack down on the students because the whole world was watching so there would be a compromise and as soon as the cameras were off they would throw the instigators into a gulag.

I had (and have) a lot of admiration for the students' bravery though. They weren't violent or disrespectful. It seemed that all they were doing was politely asking their government for a redress of their grievances.

Deng was supposed to be the reformer. He was going around saying things like,"To be rich is glorious." Conventional wisdom was that China was on the verge of becoming more democratic and open. Businesses were salivating at the chance to compete in a market with a billion car-less, dishwasher-less, consumers. So there was a lot of hope that it was the beginning of the end for the old guard.

Tianenmen Square shut a lot of people up on those matters. I realized now how brave those people really were. Personally, whenever I think of China, my first thought is of Tianenmen Square and that brave/crazy guy standing in front of the tank.

While students in the square weren't violent, neither were soldiers.

The massacre occured on the streets leading into the square, where workers, and probably students as well, were throwing up barricades, and throwing rocks and molotov cocktails as the chinese soldiers on their way to the square.

If you don't like why the chinese did what they did, comment on that. But I think massacre is a very badly chosen word. It only applies in the sense that the chinese massacred them like one sports team massacres another, or the american army massacred the scattered iraqi forces in GW2. Its not like massacring babies or livestock.