June 4th, 1989 — The Day a Student Movement Was Drowned in Blood
Today is the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and I want to make sure this doesn't scroll past you unnoticed.
In the spring of 1989, something extraordinary was happening in China. Students — young people not unlike many of us — poured into Beijing's Tiananmen Square in their hundreds of thousands. They weren't armed. They weren't violent. They were hungry for something that shouldn't be radical: democracy, press freedom, an end to corruption.
At the peak, 1.5 million people filled the Square. Workers joined. Intellectuals joined. Parents joined. For six weeks, it was the largest peaceful political protest in the history of communist China.
Then came the night of June 3rd.
Troops approached from all sides of the city. Ordinary citizens threw up barricades. And then the soldiers — armed with AK-47s loaded with battlefield ammunition — opened fire on unarmed people in the streets.
On June 4th, tanks drove through crowds of fleeing students. An ambulance rushing to the wounded was shot at. Dozens were killed running away. The Square was sealed shut for two weeks.
The Chinese government called it a crackdown on a "counter-revolutionary riot."
The death toll has never been officially confirmed. Estimates suggest over 10,000 people were killed.
And then there was the Tank Man — one lone figure who stood in the road and faced down a column of tanks with nothing but his body. We don't know his name. We don't know what became of him. But that image became one of the most iconic acts of defiance in human history.
Today, this event is almost entirely censored inside China. Young Chinese people grow up never learning it happened.
Reblog so the world keeps remembering what Beijing wants erased.
📖 Full investigative report: https://ij-reportika.com/the-anniversary-of-the-brutal-tiananmen-square-massacre/
