The events of June 4, 1989, what the Western media dubbed the Tiananmen Square Massacre, has been etched into history as a symbol of Chinese oppression.
In Western reports thousands, according to a BBC report as late as 2017 up to 10,000, demonstrating students were killed by Chinese armed forces on that square in Beijing. Nobody has challenged the reported events, they were accepted at face value, just because they appeared in “trustworthy, “vetted”, “dependable” news media outlets.
Yet, upon closer examination, the narrative peddled by outlets like the BBC and New York Times crumbles under scrutiny. There is no photographic evidence of mass killings on the square—no images of machine-gunned students, bodies crushed by tanks, or bayoneted protesters as claimed.
Eyewitnesses present that night tell a different story.
Australian diplomat Gregory Clark, a Spanish TVE television crew, a Reuters correspondent, and Taiwan-born writer Hou Dejian were all on the square and reported no massacre. They described a tense standoff, not a bloodbath. Indeed, even in the US Embassy cables, released by Wikileaks in 2011, there is no report of any massacre at all, quite the opposite.
(WikiLeaks: Public Library of US Diplomacy / Latin American Diplomat’s Eyewitness Account of June 3-4 Events on Tiananmen Square):
“They were able to enter and leave the square several times and were not harassed by troops. Remaining with students by the monument to the People’s heroes until the final withdrawal, the diplomat said there were no mass shootings of students in the square or at the monument.”
In 2009, James Miles, who was the BBC correspondent in Beijing at the time, admitted that he had ‘conveyed the wrong ‘impression’ and that there was no massacre on 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…”
Wrong “impression” he says? Let me translate that: he lied.
The night before, the Chinese government dispatched busloads of unarmed soldiers to peacefully persuade students to disperse. These soldiers were met with violence: protesters attacked the buses with Molotov cocktails, setting dozens of vehicles ablaze. Photographic evidence from that chaos—easily found via a quick Google image search—shows burnt-out buses and the charred bodies of soldiers who were beaten, lynched, and killed.
Tragically, some protesters were killed the next day, away from the square, as soldiers sought revenge for their fallen comrades. This was not a premeditated slaughter but a response to the prior night’s brutality.
And what about the legendary “Tankman’?
Well, he was no “hero”, no “brave student” who stood up to oppression and single handedly stopped the column of mighty tanks of the Chinese Army. According to the man who took the photo, Jeff Widener of AP, the true story is very different. The photo was taken June 5, not June 4. The tanks were going away from, not towards, the direction of the Square. They were blocked not by a student but by a man with a shopping bag crossing the street who had chosen to play chicken with the departing tanks.
In conclusion, the Tiananmen Square Massacre is a myth. All we are “remembering” are British and American lies, fabricated to suit Cold War-era agendas. It’s time to separate fact from fiction.
Tiananmen square remains the classic example of the shallowness and bias in most Western media reporting, especially about China, and of governmental black information operations seeking to control those media. It is a stark warning not to blindly believe headlights screaming about atrocities, especially from state-controlled medias. It’s important to approach reported events with a balanced perspective and to rely on various sources for accurate information.
It’s crucial to consider multiple sources and perspectives when forming an understanding of important historical events. Alex