Tank Man
Posted on 06/04/2025 11:09:58 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
BEIJING (AP) — For most Chinese, the 36th anniversary of a bloody crackdown that ended pro-democracy protests in China passed like any other weekday. And that’s just how the ruling Communist Party wants it.
Security was tight Wednesday around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where weeks of student-led protests shook the party in 1989. Under then-leader Deng Xiaoping, the military was sent in to end the protest on the night of June 3-4. Using live ammunition, soldiers forced their way through crowds that tried to block them from reaching the square. Hundreds and possibly thousands of people were killed, including dozens of soldiers.
The party has tried, with some success, to erase what it calls the “political turmoil” of 1989 from the collective memory. It bans any public commemoration or mention of the June 4 crackdown, scrubbing references from the internet.
In recent years, that ban has been extended to Hong Kong, where a once-massive annual candlelight vigil is no longer permitted. Police said they brought 10 people on suspicion of breaching public peace to a police station for investigation. Three were still detained late Wednesday, while the rest were allowed to leave. Police also arrested a woman for failing to show her identity document and a man for obstructing police officers from performing their duties.
It is only in Taiwan, a self-governing island that is claimed by China but runs its own affairs, that large June 4 gatherings can still take place.
Tiananmen Square is a vast space in the center of Beijing with monumental, communist-era buildings along two sides and the mausoleum of Mao Zedong, who founded the communist era in 1949, on the south end.
University students occupied this symbolically important site in the spring of 1989. Their calls for freedoms divided...
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
And the West went right along.
Heck, here they are even suppressing the current news.
This is from the same AP news that fussed about Jan 6 protestors who wanted accurate vote counts.
36 years. Could it happen again and will it be different? We hear a lot about protests but nothing comes of it.
Since the Shang dynasty thousands of years ago, China has been ruled by emperors, tyrants, and assorted bureaucrats for all but 30 years, 20 of which were spent suffering the horrors of Japanese genocidal destruction.
The best we can hope for is replacing Maoist dictators with some Confucian-based control with the semblance of a republic, such as we see in ROK and Japan; Locke and Jefferson would feel out of place, but it would be a giant step forward.
Military killing your own citizens. I bet it was uncomfortable when the soldier came home on leave at the dinner table.
Time suppresses history better than anything. We see that here. 9-11 anniversaries just keep getting quieter, because it was a long time ago and the percentage of the populace that has a living memory of the event just keeps shrinking.
This is the kind of thing that makes me want the Three Gorges Dam to break. China as it is today is a lost cause. It needs a major disaster to wash away the present system.
“And the West went right along.”
And the IOC went ahead and awarded Beijing the Olympics too.
China’s ability to suppress history is amateurish compared to the US Democrat Party!
A quiet Tiananmen Square anniversary shows China’s ability to suppress history
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With a lot of help from Google/You Tube massive deletion of massacre videos.
Military killing your own citizens. I bet it was uncomfortable when the soldier came home on leave at the dinner table.
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They were lowly poorly, if at all, educated mountain troops. At the dinner table in their remote impoverished villages - no one would have known anything about what happened.
This is the kind of thing that makes me want the Three Gorges Dam to break.
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So you wold urge the murder of 420 million people and the utter destruction of 7 cities because you don’t like what the 7 people who rule China did over 30 years ago?
Seriously not our business. Good for them for putting down trouble quickly.
Tank Man
I wonder if they harvested his organs or just squashed him under the tank treads?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man
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