With a name meaning “gate of heavenly peace”, it’s ironic how, in 1989, Beijing’s Tiananmen Square became the place of one of the most violent politically driven massacres of all time.
Earlier that year, the square had been the site of non-violent pro-democracy protests, caused by the increasing frustration of the population with the uprising economic issues and China’s laws on press censorship and freedom of assembly. Some leaders of the Chinese government sympathized with the protesters, who were mostly students and working-class people. These politicians were aware of the significant hardships that the population was facing due to the growing poverty and unemployment, so they felt compelled to support them with their need for democratic reforms.
However, others saw this blunt disapproval of China’s way of leadership as an emerging political threat that needed to be stopped.
Thus, on the 20th of May, martial law was declared as a direct result of the Chinese government’s accumulative uneasiness with the demonstrations. Over 250,000 troops were stationed in the Beijing area with the purposed of curtailing the protests. However, the military presence was not enough to make the people shy away from challenging the regime. By the end of May, over one million protesters had gathered in Tiananmen Square to hold daily marches and vigils that demonstrated their discontentment.
Since the presence of the armed forces failed to stifle the protests, the Chinese authorities decided to take a different approach and increase their aggression. As a result, at 1 a.m., on June 4, the once peaceful square became the set of pandemonium and destruction as Chinese soldiers stormed Tiananmen Square and mowed every civilian in sight as they fired shots into the crowd.
Confronted with this scenario, thousands of protesters tried to escape while others decided to stay back and fight their oppressors by stoning the troops and setting on fire their vehicles. An identified man even went as far as standing alone in front of a column of Chinese tanks, blocking their way into the square.
This act of defiance and courage went down in history. However, “Tiananmen Square Tank Man” was never heard of again.
Reporters and Western diplomats that were there, on that day, estimated that hundreds to thousands of protesters were killed in the massacre, and as many as 10,000 were arrested.
For the past 30 years, China has continuously failed to address the issue and acknowledge what happened, preferring to erase the occurrence from Chinese history, censoring every mention of it, rather than apologizing for the massacre.
Sources:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/how-protest-tiananmen-square-turned-into-massacre