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 uploaded this pictures in my old Xiaomi cloud account. It took almost 100 MB out of 5 GB free space. Other 4.9 GB is taken by Winnie the Pooh pictures and memes about Xi.
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.
Interestingly, and having done a bit of extra reading, the current Western position is that the killings didn't actually happen in the square itself, but in the surrounding streets as the army was pushing through Beijing to reach Tiananmen Square. Some of the initial reports that came out were evidently erroneous. Again, that's internal communications in the USA acknowledging that. But still very awful and hundreds of people killed according to that version of events.
Thanks for this. China keeps trying to wipe away this event by having any image deleted. It needs to be reposted and seen often.
There are diplomatic cables from Australia and Britain about the massacre that have been declassified. Shit was fucked and I don't know if the cables are common knowledge. That article is a great read.
Those cables have been proven to be full of shit. Go to Wikipedia and read the accounts of the survivors that were pulled out by the CIA in Operation yellowbird https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird if you want to piece together what happened from primary sources.
Ya know I dont know if thats legit NSFL or if im just that desensitized to war photos. Maybe giving 12 year old me a book on the civil war that included post battle photos and sections from a contemporary medical book with photos from the mangled corpses wasnt the wisest move by my grandmother. But ya know what those photos do invoke within me absolute fucken rage.
Didn't load
Removed by either automatic filter, .world mods/admins or .ee mods/admins.
Uh oh, did they take it down?
That's a lot of bicycles!
Damn malicious AI image generators trying to tarnish the good name of the CCP. Smh. (/s)
Yeah, those horrible AI image generators of the late 80s look like garbage - most photos don't even have colour! /s
It's pretty amazing how they let that guy just harass a tank for several minutes and even climb on it, then just kinda let him be led away by bystanders.
For some reason growing up I think everyone assumed he got ran over or killed?
For some reason growing up I think everyone assumed he got ran over or killed?
Because hundreds if not thousands of others were (others have already linked the graphic content).
Also, seeing him being led away in this footage is zero evidence that he survived his protest (unsurprisingly, there is no documentation of him or what the government did to him, but considering what they did to others like him, there is very little room to doubt that he didn't make it).
I'll play devil's advocate - the photographs don't seem to show evidence of thousands dying, or even hundreds necessarily. Dozens, absolutely. I doubt we'll ever know the actual numbers, though. Clearly something awful happened.
Edit: I mean, they really don't... and if they "only" ran over fifty civilians with tanks I think we can still consider that an unforgivable example of state violence. It's not as if the Kent State shootings were okay because they only killed four people.
I'm just saying, I don't feel the photographic record is a particularly robust source when it comes to supporting those higher claims. That doesn't mean it didn't happen that way, just that the pictures are inadequate to prove that.
"Just harass a tank" XD
This man is a fucking hero and deserves to be recognized as such.
This was the photo in my local newspaper when it happened. Source: local paper boy. (Was greyscale)
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?
The Tiananmen Square protest and massacre happened in 1989.
Yes, that would be the 20th century.
I think they're saying that, in the 21st century they haven't seen many pictures of the event. Not that they haven't seen pictures from the 21st century.
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.
You never visited the Wikipedia page before?
The wikipedia page doesn't have any version of this image. Regardless, the most shared images are closer up and from the ground, showing about 5 tanks, not this version with 50 tanks. The image of him sitting in front of a few tanks was the most widely used I believe.
If I remember correctly, the version OP posted was newly found/released only a few years ago. E: this is what I was thinking of.
I imagine most people don't visit that page. It's totally normal.
What is Wikipedia?
i assumed it was a meme post until i looked at the community name
All of those tanks are just on patriotic vacation. There is no other reason for them to be there.
Funny you say that, because a ton of military equipment circles the place like every year.
That's odd, because that's the photo I immediately think of when the massacre is brought up. I thought it was really well-known.
Most people think of this one
Is that a picture of John Cena and Drax?
No.
