24 years ago today (death, military, companies, party)

[Little-Acorn]

24 years ago today, on June 4, 1989, Chinese students and other citizens faced down large portions of the Chinese military at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and other locations throughout China. The Chinese people refer to them as the "June 4 uprisings", since they took place in more than 300 cities across China, not just in Tiananmen Square.

Due to the lack of information coming out of China's tightly government-controlled media, death toll estimates nationwide range from several hundred, to thousands.



Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

----------------------------------------------

BTW, today the Chinese government is frantically blocking internet searches for terms like "June 4", "uprising", "protest", etc.

Someone photoshopped the famous image of a well-dressed man with a briefcase facing down four Chinese tanks in the largest open public square in China, Tian An Men Square. The Photoshop artist replaced the four tanks in the picture, with four giant rubber ducks; and sent the altered photo out on Twitter as a joke.

And as a result, the Chinese government is even blocking searches for the terms "rubber duck" and "yellow duck"!

Leftist totalitarians can sure look stupid sometimes, here and abroad, when they try to enforce their agendas.

-------------------------------------

Tiananmen Square online searches censored by Chinese authorities | World news | guardian.co.uk

Tiananmen Square online searches censored by Chinese authorities
Banned search terms include 'today', 'tomorrow' and date references in attempt to quell protest

Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 June 2013 08.55 EDT


Twitter image mocking Chinese censorship of Tiananmen Square, adapted from AP's 1989 photograph (the search term 'Big Yellow Duck' is banned). Photograph: Twitter/weibo.com/weibolg

It takes a very significant date for the word "today" to be deemed too sensitive to mention. But 24 years after the Chinese government's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, "today" is part of a long list of search terms that have been censored on Sina Weibo, the country's most popular microblog.

Other banned words include "tomorrow," "that year," "special day," and many number combinations that could refer to 4 June 1989, such as 6-4, 64, 63+1, 65-1, and 35 (shorthand for May 35th).

Chinese Communist party authorities, fearing a threat to their legitimacy, forbid open discussion of the so-called "June 4th incident" in the country's media and on its internet. Yet internet users have reacted by using ever-more oblique references to commemorate the tragedy, treating censors to an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse.

Many of their posts have been embedded in pictures, which can often elude automatic detection: a girl with her hand over her mouth; a Lego man facing down three green Lego tanks; the iconic "tank man" picture with its tanks photoshopped into four giant rubber ducks, a reference to a well-known art installation in Hong Kong's Victoria harbour.

Most of these pictures, too, have since been scrubbed clean. By Tuesday afternoon, the term "big yellow duck" had also been blocked.

[urbanlife78]

Thanks for the history post.

[Little-Acorn]

Originally Posted by urbanlife78

Thanks for the history post.

It's not just "history".

The government censorship of any mentions of the uprisings and their effects, goes on today. And by many measures is getting rapidly worse.

[urbanlife78]

Originally Posted by Little-Acorn

It's not just "history".

The government censorship of any mentions of the uprisings and their effects, goes on today. And by many measures is getting rapidly worse.

Actually it was a historical event and that is what I was commenting on.

[mwruckman]

At least the Chinese Government and Party can look back with satisfaction that they are still here and just as entrenched in power 24 years later unlike the feckless Mikhail Gorbachev and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In fact in the years since June 4, 1989 the Chinese economy has nearly quadrupled in size and they got the West to largely finance the development. You don't think the Chinese pay to build all those factories for Western companies to make stuff in China now do you?

[Chava61]

I believe that in Hong Kong there is a tradition of peaceful demonstrations to mark the occasion.

[Little-Acorn]

An interestng documentary, made in 2006. Some Chinese students from a university in Bejing, are showed that picture of the tanks in Tian An Men Square, with the lone guy with the briefcase standing in front of them (See OP).

They stare at it, look at each other, can't figure out what it is. They've never seen or heard of it. These are educated college students.

That was seven years ago. I don't know if that level of "education" is any better now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=idE6f78cu7I

[wade52]

Throughout its thousands of years, China has never been anything but a dismal, totalitarian state. So many people suffer under its authoritarian bootheel, which has changed little, regardless of the title of its ruler.

[Harrier]

I see that at least couple of liberals are dismissing the impact of the tyrannical Chinese governments crackdown on freedom fighters 24 years a go.

These same people are members of the Democratic Party.

Does anyone ever ask them why they support the draconian and barbaric practices of Red China?

[DewDropInn]

I remember this very well. He wasn't holding a briefcase. That incredibly brave man was holding shopping bags.

His fate remains unknown.

OP: Details matter. Especially the details of those days. He went out on June 5th, not the 4th, knowing the tanks were in the square and students had been attacked the previous day.