• Alaskaball [comrade/them]
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    801 year ago

    CBS NEWS: “We saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a “massacre” had occurred in [Tiananmen Square]”

    BBC NEWS: “I was one of the foreign journalists who witnessed the events that night. There was no massacre on Tiananmen Square”

    NY TIMES: In June 13, 1989, NY Times reporter Nicholas Kristof – who was in Beijing at that time – wrote, “State television has even shown film of students marching peacefully away from the [Tiananmen] square shortly after dawn as proof that they [protesters] were not slaughtered.” In that article, he also debunked an unidentified student protester who had claimed in a sensational article that Chinese soldiers with machine guns simply mowed down peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square.

    REUTERS: Graham Earnshaw was in the Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3. He didn’t leave the square until the morning of June 4th. He wrote in his memoir that the military came, negotiated with the students and made everyone (including himself) leave peacefully; and that nobody died in the square.

    200-300 people died in clashes in various parts of Beijing, around June 4 — and about half of those who died were soldiers and cops..

    A Wikileaks cable from the US Embassy in Beijing (sent in July 1989) also reveals the eyewitness accounts of a Latin American diplomat and his wife: “They were able to enter and leave the [Tiananmen] square several times and were not harassed by troops. Remaining with students … until the final withdrawal, the diplomat said there were no mass shootings in the square or the monument.”

    Numerous military buses, trucks, armored vehicles, and tanks being burned by the “peaceful” protesters. Sometimes the soldiers were allowed to escape, and sometimes they were brutally killed by the protesters. Numerous protesters were armed with Molotov cocktails and even guns.

    Wall Street Journal: In an article from June 5, 1989, the Wall Street Journal described some of this violence: “Dozens of soldiers were pulled from trucks, severely beaten and left for dead. At an intersection west of the square, the body of a young soldier, who had been beaten to death, was stripped naked and hung from the side of a bus.”

    The official report of the Chinese government from 1989 (translated here) shows that more than 1000 military and police vehicles were burned by rioters. And 200+ soldiers and policemen were murdered. Just imagine how much restraint the military and the police had shown.

    Wait, how could the protesters kill so many soldiers? Because, until the very end, Chinese soldiers were unarmed. Most of the times, they didn’t even have helmets or batons.

    What exactly happened in Beijing in 1989 that lead to this bloody affair?

    The answer lies with two key figures: General Secretary Hu Yaobang, and Ambassador James Lilley.

    Hu Yaobang was a member of the communist party of China and was one of the three major rightist-reformers that set China on the path its on today, the other two being Zhao Ziyang, and Deng Xiaoping respectively. Hu Yaobang as a reformer was also a spokesman for the intelligentsia and by the end of his life was well-beloved by the youth of China (we’re talking below 30 here, folks) therefore when he passed away the youth of China organized public grieving events with the largest occurring in Beijing. This is to say if Hu didn’t die from old age that year, none of this would’ve happened that year. This is to also say this event had nothing to do with “freedom” or “democracy” or whatever pigshit your favorite rush limburger propagandist spoon feeds you, it was a funeral service that was hijacked to unseat the Chinese government - which so coincidentally is a speciality of the agency the second person we’re talking about.

    Ambassador James Lilley, the son of an american expat oil executive for Standard Oil, was a CIA agent operating in east Asia from 1951 to 1981 with little officially known about him (I know for a fact he’s fucked around Korea and Laos, so it’s not a stretch to say he’s likely been involved with every conflict that occured during his official career). In his “post” CIA career he’s acted as a diplomatic liason to the provice of Taiwan, a teacher to future state department ghouls, and “helped” South Korea end its military dicatorship by helping the military win the election “democratically”, and abruptly five days after the death of General Secretary Hu Yaobang James Lilley was appointed as the US Ambassador to China by also former CIA ghoul and president of the United States George H. W. Bush. What an astounding coincidence.

    In an article from Vancouver Sun (17 Sep 1992) described the role of the CIA: “The Central Intelligence Agency had sources among [Tiananmen Square] protesters” … and “For months before [the protests], the CIA had been helping student activists form the anti-government movement.”

    • Alaskaball [comrade/them]
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      631 year ago

      And just a reminder. In communist China, you can be a pain in the ass by obstructing tanks trying to exist a parade, argue with the commander, then get rushed away by other normal people going “dude what the Hell’s your problem”

      In capitalist America if you step out of line by doing something as minor a exersizing your constitutional rights, you’ll be maimed or murdered. Hell sometimes you’ll get maimed and murdered because the schutzstaffel feel like it

    • @doctorcrimson@lemmy.today
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      181 year ago

      I do appreciate skepticism wherever applicable, but China keeps getting handed from one Dictatorship to another so it’s hard to see them as victims unless they make some effort to change in more ways than just economically. It also sounds like complete bullshit that the “armed and dangerous protestors” died in equal number to “unarmed and unhelmeted military personnel.” Like, for real? Those tanks in a line were made of cardboard?

    • @littlecolt@lemm.ee
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      141 year ago

      You useful idiots are going to be among the first against the wall to find out about China’s mercy I imagine. You’ll demand to fellate the firing squad beforehand.

      • Flinch [he/him]
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        211 year ago

        When the People’s Liberation Army makes landfall on the western shores of North America, I will be here to greet them as heroes mao-wave

      • muddi [he/him]
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        191 year ago

        idgi what are you trying to say here?

        China hunts down useful idiots? All their firing squad members have penises? The Great Wall is used for executions?

    • @smeg@feddit.uk
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      81 year ago

      Did you even read your own articles or did you just cherry-pick quotes? For instance the conclusion of the BBC article:

      There was no Tiananmen Square massacre, but there was a Beijing massacre.

      The shorthand we often use of the “Tiananmen Square protests” of 1989 gives the impression that this was just a Beijing issue. It was not.

      Protests occurred in almost every city in China (even in a town on the edge of the Gobi desert).

      What happened in 1989 was by far the most widespread pro-democracy upheaval in communist China’s history. It was also by far the bloodiest suppression of peaceful dissent.

    • TheBroodian [none/use name]
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      71 year ago

      Thank you, very frustrated that I had to scroll so far down to find this with regard to the so-called Tiananmen Square “massacre”

    • @LordBelphegor@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Great job comrade, president XiJing Ping will personally give you an offer to be an officer in Uigyur internment camps.

      WuMao.

  • @Cabrio@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You can tell the poster is American because they blame the government involved for all of these except the US, where they blamed the CIA.

  • Erika2rsis
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    “Was there a massacre in Tiananmen Square?”

    —“No.”

    “Were people killed elsewhere in Beijing?”

    —“…Ermh…”

    Ahem. I am asking you if people were killed in the area immediately surrounding Tiananmen Square, even if nobody was killed in the square itself.”

    —“The protesters in Tiananmen Square left after negotiations with the PLA. There was no bloodshed in Tiananmen Square.”

    “I understand that, but were people killed elsewhere in Beijing?

    —“Nowhere in Beijing were student protestors specifically targeted.”

    “Well, were non-students targeted, and were any students injured or killed without being targeted?”

    —“Hey did you know that the Three Gorges Dam is the world’s largest—”

    “Gongchandang, my friend, I am begging you.”

    —“…Force may have been used when provoked by attacks.”

    “May force have also been used unprovoked? Could it have been that the protesters felt like they were provoked first, because you were sending tanks past the barricades that they’d put up?”

    —“I mean… you know… uhh…”

    “Gongchandang. Were you scared that the occupation of Beijing and the potential of a workers’ revolt would threaten the survival of socialism in China, by presenting a still-socialist alternative to your rule, because societal division particularly among the less politically literate could be (and was) exploited by outside forces?”

    —“OUR YOUTH ARE VULNERABLE TO IMPERIALIST PROPAGANDA, OK‽ ALSO, TANK MAN DIDN’T GET RUN OVER. SEE. HE WAS PULLED AWAY BY A PASSERBY. NOT RUN OVER.”

  • @Samsy@lemmy.ml
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    521 year ago

    The US about indigenous Americans.

    Oh wait, they made hundreds of movies about killing them.

    • kfc [any]
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      161 year ago

      That really is one of the most absurd things about the American Empire. They’ll come and destroy your people, taint and corrupt your land with bones and blood, bomb you back into the stone age, and then make a trillion dollar budget film about how it made them feel sad. The othering is so powerful that emotions only exist within the walls of capital

      • @Samsy@lemmy.ml
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        31 year ago

        But I wouldn’t blame this. The people making the movies hasn’t been in common with the crime.

  • 2Password2Remember [he/him]
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    511 year ago

    imagine believing tiananmen square is in any way comparable to the rest of this list. OP showing their whole ass

    Death to America

    • FuckyWucky [none/use name]
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      1 year ago

      what do you mean 300 deaths isn’t in any way comparable to thousands/millions of deaths during the Holocaust, Aremnian genocide, Bengal famine, Operation Condor or Japanese occupation?

    • @littlecolt@lemm.ee
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      101 year ago

      Smooth-brained western Chinese apologists is not what I was expecting from the future of the internet even 5 years ago. Our atrocities are totally cool, eh? Nice.

      • FuckyWucky [none/use name]
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        1 year ago

        yeah, next the internet will be defending Iraqi incubator babies or Saddam’s people-shredder.

        also, very rude of you to assume im a mayo western cracker.

      • Alaskaball [comrade/them]
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        181 year ago

        What is a western China? There’s only one China.

        If you try act like a redditor and go “its what i call taiwan” then you’re literally bumbling around like a drunken dipshit who insists calling the United States “Northern Florida”. Although if we’re to make more accurate historical inference, it would be apt to say you’re the equivalent of those “The South Shall Rise Again” cross-burning confederate dipshits that never shut up about the massive L you took

        • They mean Chinese apologists from the west.

          I for one am not apologizing for much of anything really. Mistakes have been made but the party has grown from that and critiques those. None of these are what these anti-chinese people are saying though

      • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
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        181 year ago

        No, it is true. US tried to stir up some trouble and it didn’t work. That is import to remember the people that dies because of US greed

      • 2Password2Remember [he/him]
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        241 year ago

        yeah buddy, ya got me. the cia’s attempt to overthrow the communist party of China failed, but succeeded in getting a few hundred people killed. not exactly the Holocaust libs love to claim it was

        Death to America

  • ThenThreeMore
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    1 year ago

    The Australian’s about their treatment of aborigines first nation Australians

    The Irish about mother and baby homes.

    China about Uyghurs

    • @zephyreks@programming.dev
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      381 year ago

      Didn’t a bunch of Muslim countries actually ask China about Uyghurs (and even visit Xinjiang) and they left unanimously content with the response?

    • @TechLich@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      “aborigines” is not a great word to use these days. It’s generally seen as pretty offensive to Indigenous Australians as it’s a bit dehumanising and comes from colinisers who treated people like animals.

      Better to go with “First Nations people”, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people” or “Indigenous Australians.”

      But yes, they’ve been treated (and in many cases continue to be treated) pretty horribly.

    • Carl
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      41 year ago

      The one that confuses me, is the statement about the Irish.

      • ThenThreeMore
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        91 year ago

        I guess you could say ask the Catholic church about Irish mother and baby homes. But the meme was doing nations.

        • @Spendrill@lemm.ee
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          41 year ago

          Blaming the Catholic Church is a good way to start but the argument that Irish people were led astray by the Church is pretty much the same argument as those who seek to divorce the Wehrmacht from complicity in SS atrocities. In both cases the answer is that they shared vital infrastructure with each other and ranking officials could have stopped the excesses, which they had full knowledge of, if they’d have disagreed with it.

    • davel [he/him]
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      441 year ago

      1989 Tian’anmen Square riots

      The 1989 Tian’anmen Square riots (天安门事件) were a CIA-backed attempt at a color revolution against the People’s Republic of China in 1989. Reservations over Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening up policies sparked peaceful protests, which the CPC negotiated with, but soon a foreign-funded faction of students joined the protests and, due to their promotion by Western media, took over the protests and took them in an entirely different direction than what was originally envisioned.

      […]

      As the protests were winding down and many protestors went home, the Chinese government sent unarmed PLA troops the clear the square of remaining protestors as the Beijing police was overwhelmed due to their sheer numbers throughout the city. On June 2, rioters burned and lynched unarmed soldiers trying to enter the square. The troops were initially unarmed, but were given weapons on June 3 after the students took some soldiers hostage. They were blocked from entering the square by crowds armed with petrol bombs, iron clubs, and Molotov cocktails. The rioters destroyed over 400 vehicles and destroyed a convoy of over 100 vehicles in western Beijing.

      […]

      The riots in Beijing resulted in approximately 300 total deaths, including 36 students, 10 PLA soldiers, and 13 police officers. All of the deaths occurred outside of the square itself.

      • Imagine being retarded enough to actually believe such lazy propaganda. Tankies really are desperate enough to believe anything to validate their shitty failed ideology.

      • Erika2rsis
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        91 year ago

        Honestly, I read the above article a few months ago, and I think it is a genuinely good article that I would recommend others read. It was written nine years after Tiananmen by Jay Mathews of the Washington Post, who was in Beijing during the protests; and the Columbia Journalism Review is a respected publication written by and for professional journalists. So the article is basically just trying to disspell the dumbing down and memeifying and misremembering and making-into-propaganda that happened with Tiananmen, and which honestly tends to happen with any major loss of life. No conspiracy theories, no denialism or claiming that “they had it coming”, just dispelling misconceptions. It’s good stuff.

        I can’t speak for Davel’s other comment citing Prolewiki, though — I’m pretty skeptical to any website that tries to be Wikipedia but for X ideology.

        In any case, this “butthurt report” feels pretty unfair, although I honestly did kinda roll my eyes at how Davel’s comment said “6 out of 7 ain’t bad”, that was kinda cringe… But basically, what I’m trying to say is that I wouldn’t fault someone for commenting under a “9/11 NEVER FORGET” post about the extent to which mismanagement and confusion contributed to the death toll of that, and likewise I wouldn’t fault someone for commenting under a Tiananmen Square post with more nuance about that event.

        • davel [he/him]
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          61 year ago

          It’s not unreasonable to have skepticism of ProleWiki.

          You might think Wikipedia lacks ideology or bias, but in my opinion it tends to have a Global North/Atlanticist bias. This is probably because of the place of its birth and the people who created it, like American libertarian Jimmy Wales, and the people who have managed it, like Katherine Maher, who has worked for National Democratic Institute and the Atlantic Council, and currently works for the U.S. State Dept.

          • davel [he/him]
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            1 year ago

            And obviously the English language Wikipedia is generally going to have an anglo-Atlanticist point of view, as virtually all L1 English speakers and most many L2 English speakers do.

          • Erika2rsis
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            21 year ago

            Honestly, I absolutely already believe that Wikipedia can be highly biased in those ways. The problem is really just with the liberal shaitan who whispers kapitalist propaganda into my ears. I should know better.

        • It’s silly to trust the testimony of a single journalist over the dozens of other journalists who were there. His conflicting report is the minority and for a reason. I’m not saying he’s lying, but it seems disingenuous to seek out anything that goes against the consensus. The evidence and the testimonies clearly point towards a government ordered massacre of civilians. If nothing happened like tankies claim, then the Chinese government would go to the extreme lengths that it does to deny the existence of the event entirely.

  • peopleproblems
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    I don’t know if I would have used Tiananmen Square.

    The Uighur re-education cities seems far more fitting.

    • CyclohexaneM
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      Yeah tiananmen is such a meme at this point. You can tell when people base their entire politics on memes and don’t bother reading and searching on their own. Tiananmen is an issue they won’t step mentioning.

        • CyclohexaneM
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          I think the other comment on this thread addressed it pretty well: https://hexbear.net/comment/4003110

          I’m pretty skeptical about taking political positions from memes, and when I’ve done my own research on this, I failed to find valid reasons that this issue should get the attention that the Internet gives it. There are many other issues that are worth my attention. This one isn’t.

            • CyclohexaneM
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              Plenty of sources provided in there (ny times, reuters, etc), but if you were the kind to examine evidence, you wouldn’t be here anyways.

                • CyclohexaneM
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                  31 year ago

                  I love how you ignored everything in the article except what could possibly agree with your viewpoint. On your first quote, the link they cite does not exist anymore. In the video you linked, I hear gunshots but don’t see people running away from them. As someone from a country that saw unrest and shooting at protests, I can tell you that people immediately start running when they’re shot at, emptying the area. Not continue to March nonchalantly.

                  In the end, I want to conclude with saying that I didn’t deny that anyone died (although the comment I linked does seem to imply that. My apologies for not clarifying, as I was only using them to back up my opinion). What I said in the original comment is that it is not an issue worth my attention. I’ve seen and read about so many government rerpression, and this is far from being in the top 10. It’s an unnecessarily magnified issue.

          • @Gamey@feddit.de
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            81 year ago

            Not even going to click on that, the domain tells me everything I need to know considering the topic we talk about!

            • @DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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              1 year ago

              I mean, it’s a variety of sourced quotes from respected journalists who were there. You probably should read them all, if only so you can point out to the Hexbears where they mention all the people who died in the area around the Square. The sources mostly say “no one got gunned down literally in the Square.”

              In any case, it’s fucking weird to obsess over it. It’s like trying to give Biden crap about the Kent State Massacre while he’s rounding up all the Mormons.

            • CyclohexaneM
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              Plenty of evidence cited there from multiple sources. You don’t have to open it, but the evidence is there shall you question it.

              • @Gamey@feddit.de
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                31 year ago

                Abother user made a very good comment about this under my post, might be worth checking out!

                • CyclohexaneM
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                  11 year ago

                  I agree with that commenter. I do not claim that “nothing happened”. I said this in my earlier comments, that I just don’t think it’s a problem worth my attention.

          • punkisundead [they/them]
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            41 year ago

            Numerous military buses, trucks, armored vehicles, and tanks being burned by the “peaceful” protesters. Sometimes the soldiers were allowed to escape, and sometimes they were brutally killed by the protesters. Numerous protesters were armed with Molotov cocktails and even guns.

            Sounds like a full blown insurrection.

      • @Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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        41 year ago

        I knew this was going to be the only one people tried to deny in this thread, but I didn’t figure it would be OP

    • Or the invasion of Vietnam… Or the annexation of Tibet… Or the bullying of Southeast Asian countries… Or the great leap forward… Or the communist land reforms… Or the anti counterrevolutionary campaigns

      The CCP leaves you no end of really good options to pick here.

  • @icepuncher69@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    The Canadian government about the canadian indian residential school system

    The Iran government about Salman Rushdie

    The Mexican government about Ayotzinapas 43

    The British government about their museums

    The German government about their car manufacturers.

    The Indian government about Aasif Sultan

    The Russian government about how much the war in Ukraine should have lasted.

    And many more…

    Do let me know btw if you know of anymore of this.

    Edit:

    Aded russia

  • @Gray@lemmy.ca
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    231 year ago

    How a person reacts to being asked about the version of these things most close to them is telling. If they get defensive and deny the event happened, I would hesitate to trust their opinion on other things. Clearly that person bases their opinions on what they want to be true rather than reality. That’s the kind of person whose ideology would likely lead to another event to be ashamed of. If, on the other hand, they admit it was a horrible thing and agree that people should be educated on it and that steps should be taken to prevent it from ever happening again, then I’m more likely to take their opinion seriously and believe that they can be part of the conversations we need to happen to create a better world.