General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTank Man
25 years ago today, the massacre in Tienanmen Square unfolded.
To this day, no one knows what happened to this man.
I consider this to be one of the most important photographs of the 20th century.
shenmue
(38,506 posts)Still brings a tear to my eye.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)I fear he was "disappeared", but I don't know that.
I wish I had the contacts in China to find out.
It seems like that would be a great quest for any of our Media outlets.
Uncle Joe
(58,481 posts)Thanks for the thread, WilliamPitt.
Brother Buzz
(36,486 posts)A couple of days ago, NPR ran a segment of a western reporter showing the iconic photograph to young Chinese adults and getting NO reaction. Nothing. No knowledge of it.
bigtree
(86,013 posts)Agony
(2,605 posts)communism meet capitalism
lark
(23,182 posts)I remember watching this unfold as I was on maternity leave with my infant daughter, who just got married a week ago.
geardaddy
(24,931 posts)The people I knew there were afraid that the PRC would invade.
TeeYiYi
(8,028 posts)After reading multiple articles on what might have happened to him, I choose to believe that he disappeared into the crowd and eventually moved to Taiwan.
TYY
FailureToCommunicate
(14,027 posts)because it looks like some fellow civilians, not soldiers, hustle him out of the way of the tank column.
Thanks for posting!
Response to WilliamPitt (Original post)
TeeYiYi This message was self-deleted by its author.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)May 22, 1989: A young couple dances among a crowd, which had been occupying Tiananmen Square for nine days at this point. What strikes me about this photo is how different the Squareand young peoples' relationship to politicsis today. A generation on, young Chinese have been deprived of the cultural memory of Tiananmen. Many young Chinese have never learned about the events around June 4th. If they have heard anything about what is euphemistically called the "incident," it's often that it was a blip on the radar in the otherwise unblemished history of Communist rule. Of course, the sanitized version is far from the truth... Louisa Lim, NPR's Beijing correspondent, calls today's China The People's Republic of Amnesia. (Mark Avery/AP)
May 30, 1989: Protesters occupying Tiananmen Square work on the statue of the Goddess of Democracy, a plaster symbol of resistance and unity modeled after the Statue of Liberty. (Jeff Widener/AP)
June 3, 1989: This photo depicts a moment just before the government's response to the demonstrations turned violent. On June 3, huge crowds gathered at a Beijing intersection. The bloody crackdown was about to begin. This time, the troops had strict orders: clear the Square. (Jeff Widener/AP)
June 4, 1989: The bodies of dead civilians rest among mangled bicycles near the Square. (AP Photo)
More at Mother Jones
Chathamization
(1,638 posts)But that doesn't mean that they're going to start talking about it whenever some foreign reporter shoves a microphone in their face. Not worth the risk. It seems to be something that gets discussed more amongst family and friends, or with coded language on the internet (there's a ton of this).
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)SoapBox
(18,791 posts)Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE TIANANMEN CRACKDOWN (Senate - June 04, 1991)
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to commend our majority leader for, really, an excellent statement and a principled stand. This has been his position since the time of that terrible tragedy in Tiananmen Square some 2 years ago. I think this morning in the Senate he has, as on other occasions on our national television, I think, made the strongest possible case for insisting that any most-favored-nation provisions would be conditioned upon important progress in addressing these needs.
I just ask the majority leader if he is familiar with the statement of the Prime Minister, Premier Lee Pung, who only at the time of the anniversary, just recently, insisted that the military crackdown had been an appropriate response to the peaceful student protest, and the Chinese Government would do it again if they were faced with a similar demonstration? I think he has made the case so well in covering a wide variety of areas. But the attitude of the current Chinese Government regime would certainly appear they would be prepared to do it again today if he is not troubled by that attitude as well.
Mr. President, as has been pointed out, 2 years ago today the Government of the People's Republic of China initiated a brutal crackdown on the courageous prodemocracy students demonstrating in Tiananmen Square. By the end of the week, hundreds of peaceful demonstrators had been ruthlessly slaughtered and thousands more had been detained by government authorities.
Now, President Bush has formally announced his intention to renew most-favored-nation trading status with China. His decision, he claims, is the right thing to do with respect to China.
Unfortunately, the facts indicate otherwise. Since the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Chinese Government has intensified its repression of prodemocracy forces.
As this year's anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre approached, the Premier of China, Lee Pung, commented upon that great tragedy. He harshly insisted that the military crackdown had been an appropriate response to the peaceful student protest and that the Chinese Government would do it again if similar demonstrations were attempted in the future.
Today, Tiananmen Square is lined with armed guards to repress even the smallest demonstration of sympathy for the memory of those who died there 2 years ago.
To renew China's MFN status in the face of this brutality would make a mockery of the lives lost at Tiananmen Square and undermine whatever forces of democracy are still struggling for a new China.
President Bush's policy toward China makes no sense. Immediately following the Tiananmen crackdown, he promised to suspend all political-level exchanges with China. Yet within a month, he dispatched National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to Beijing--a trip that was kept secret from the Congress and the American people and was only acknowledged after it was reported by the press in December.
CONTINUED
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?r102:30:./temp/~r102QNzNDZ::
Several others stood up:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/B?r102:@FIELD(FLD003+s)+@FIELD(DDATE+19910604)
Captain Stern
(2,201 posts)....but the photo taken from further away makes 'tank man' look even more awesome.
KG
(28,753 posts)Leme
(1,092 posts)I watched original
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)that side with the tanks.