Chan's Personal Blog

Many nations have experienced days of great tragedy. Those days become dates of infamy that are burned into our collective minds. The Americans have their 9/11. The Spanish have their 3/11. For the Chinese, we have 6/4 which is the day of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

It all started when students in China organized protests against the Chinese Communist Party. They were demanding democratic rights, and they were protesting the corruption in the government. Thousands upon thousands of people descended on Beijing to support the protest. At the height of it, there were over a million people protesting, along with many satellite protests in other regions in China. The protests pretty much paralyzed much of Beijing.

On June 4, 1989, the goverment cracked down on the peaceful demonstrators. The communists mobilized tanks and troops against the students. The number of deaths and injured aren't clear because the government obviously tried to surpress this information, but estimates range from 700-7000 dead, and maybe 30,000 injured.

The following is a famous image from the massacre. It is entitled, the Unknown Rebel.



I was watching a documentary about the massacre on the History Channel, and it was quite interesting. The communists wanted the demonstration to end, so they called in the People's Liberation Army. The units they brought in were mostly young men from rural areas. The army tried to enter Beijing a few times with tanks and troop transports, but the local population prevented the military from entering the city several times. This was because the demonstrations had the support of many Chinese citizens. It was powerful to see citizens stopping troop transports and lecturing the young soldiers why their actions are wrong, and how the People's Liberation Army was supposed to fight for the people, not against them. Many troops abandoned their posts or defected to help protest.

The documentary also showed the students building a statue called the goddess of democracy in the square. It looked pretty much like the Statue of Liberty. Some remarked that it was a giant middle finger mocking the communists as the Goddess of Democracy was facing the portrait of the founder of communism in China.

This quickly deteriorated when the communists ordered the army into Tiananmen Square, and ordered the troops to use deadly force. A lot of people were gunned down at pointe blank by machine guns, or crushed by tanks as they approached the center of the protest. Many protesters died an anonymous death as the government did not allow families to hold funerals for their dead.

It was interesting that this event was fairly well documented because the western media was in the country covering Gorbechev's (Soviet Union Chairman) visit to China. Normally western media was not allowed in the country. The images being broadcasted to the world shocked the international community. The United States and the European Union declared an arms embargo against China.

The communists made it illegal for the media to cover the massacre, but the western media companies ignored the law. Soon after, the communists were able to jam the media's signals being beamed out of the country. Perhaps if the free media (like CNN and the BBC) wasn't in China at that time, the entire massacre could have been kept secret, and the world would have never known about this atrocity?

In either case, it sounds like China is still trying to hunt down leaders of the protests. They also ban any memorial for those who died in the massacre. They also seem completely unapologetic about their actions.

In other news, France and Germany last year wanted the European Union to drop the arms embargo against China. The reason they wanted to drop it was primarily an economic and trade issue. I think it's unwise to do so, especially since China's human rights record is still atrocious, and their intent to take back Taiwan no matter what is especially troubling. I salute members of the European Union that voted against lifting the embargo.

Anyways, this concludes your dose of anti-communist propaganda from me. A salute to those who have fallen for the cause of democracy in China. This is another reason why I hate the communists in China.