This is a large album of images from the protests in Beijing in 1989. It gives the historical context for the events leading up to the “tank man” photo, and what happened after.
Warning: blood, gore, visible injuries, death
I’ll never understand how the tankies can claim it never happened when there’s so many pictures like this available.
Even Lemmygrad says there were 300 deaths. I really can’t find anyone saying it straight up didn’t happen, not even the CPC itself. The closest is saying that the massacre happened outside the square, which seems more of a technicality that both “sides” rely on to pretend the other is making stuff up. Ie, Lemmygrad claiming others know nothing because there was no massacre on the square itself and it all happened outside, while others see that as outright denial.
Lemmygrad also believes it was CIA-backed and turned a pro-Maoist, anti-Dengist protest into an anti-Maoist, anti-Dengist, pro-Liberal Democracy/Capitalist protest, which I would say ultimately doesn’t change that protestors were murdered even if that was true.
I think it’s helpful to see what people are actually saying, you can better argue it to be an atrocity that way. For example, as above, even if it was steered in a different direction by western forces, it still had popular support and as such was still an unjust escalation of force into massacre.
The massacre is undeniable.
Thanks for sharing. Every time I see a picture of the Tiananmen Square massacre I get shivers. That man is one of the most amazing icons of resistance against oppression. I like to think of myself as brave but I’m genuinely skeptical if I’d have the courage to stand in front of a tank that way.
I’ve seen lots of pictures of Hong Kong protests, and hear about rent protests in Beijing, but haven’t seen many photos like this in Beijing proper in the 21st century. Are they that good at scrubbing the web, or did I just miss them?
China’s internet is isolated from the rest of the world. We would be looking at a lot of content created from china if it wasn’t like that.
