Tiananmen Square, 1989 -- Revisited --- Godfrey Roberts

Tiananmen Square, 1989 -- Revisited

GODFREE ROBERTS • MAY 30, 2018

 • 6,800 WORDS • 99 COMMENTS •

http://www.unz.com/article/tiananmen-square-1989-revisited/

"Famous Taiwanese entertainer Hou Dejian summarized his experience of the finale, “Some people said that two hundred died in the Square and others claimed that two thousand died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say that I did not see any of that. I don’t know where those people died. I myself was in the Square until six-thirty in the morning”. Future Nobelist Liu Xiaobo remained to the end and said he saw nobody harmed.

On June 19, Beijing Party Secretary Li Ximing delivered the results of the official enquiry. More than 7,000 were wounded or injured and two hundred forty one killed, including thirty-six students, ten soldiers and thirteen People’s Armed Police during a riot in Chang’An Road."

The BBC’s Beijing correspondent, James Miles,confessed to having “Conveyed the wrong impression, and that there was no massacre in Tiananmen Square. Protesters who were still in the square when the army reached it were allowed to leave after negotiations with martial law troops…There was no Tiananmen Square massacre”. But, even after TheColumbia Journalism Review discredited?12 the massacre story and WikiLeaks released Ambassador James Lilley’s July 12 (a month after the events) cable, few editors were interested.