Tiananmen Square Massacre is an event that took place in the summer of 1989 in Beijing, China. It is an event that forever will leave a rather haunting legacy on the Chinese culture. The Chinese citizens just wanted freedom, liberty, and justice, but with their communist government they knew they wouldn’t get anywhere without a fight. What many people don’t realize is that the massacre wasn’t just with Beijing but it was national movement with people from all over the country who stood behind the students who were also willing to put their lives on the line; they were not alone.
The Tiananmen Square Massacre left many speechless and at lost for words as they watched their brothers, sisters, mom, dads, cousins, (etc. ) be murdered in front of them. The exact death toll total will forever be unknown. To this day bringing up this event nearly 30 years later could still end in an arrest. The Chinese citizens saw America as their vision of what they had hoped for China to be one day. Tiananmen Square Massacre was a democracy movement in China’s modern history and one of the most heart wrenching events. While the people of China idolized America they still haven’t come close to what America is today.
Although the Chinese culture has come far from where they were 30 years ago (1989) during the Tiananmen Square Massacre, they still have a long way to go. In 1989 students were rioting because, they were convinced that there government had too much power over the citizens. That is still the case today. China’s government still over-controls all there 1. 4 billion people that live there today. One of the most popular laws in China is there limited amount of children they can have. In the past years you could only have one child but, that’s recently been changed, now ou can have two children. That’s outrageous if you ask me. Most of the citizens of China in 1989 would more than agree with me. The rights that are granted to you in America are the complete opposite in China, we so often overlook our freedom here in America and often take it for granted. The root of the massacre was Hu Yaobang’s death on April 15th, 1989 a few months before. “Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party leader, dies. Hu had worked to move China toward a more open political system and had become a symbol of democratic reform” (Library, 2015).
Hu was on the student’s side and that is why he had favored so much. When Hu Yaobang died the students saw it there chance to have a memorial to mourn his death. They saw as an opportunity to open up to the government about how they felt about the government’s decisions. In this case the government fired back with bullets. It is clear that the Tiananmen Square massacre arose when Hu died. Tiananmen Square Massacre was an event that was more than just killing happening in the square, but people were even killed on the main avenues and even from inside their homes. Students were only a small minority of the protestors of the more than a million who choked the streets of Beijing only about 100,000 were students, the rest where academics and journalists and manual labors small business men and party members” (Chapel, 2014). Jonathan Mirsky states that”, at about 11 or 12 that night the army began to come into the square and they began to shoot people and beat people up” (Chapel, Eyewitness Account of Tianamen Square Massacre, 2014).
Jonathon said he was one of those people who were beaten just because; just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Citizens in China were frightened as the military began firing randomly into the crowds. People being slaughtered, however they weren’t going down without a fight we saw citizens fighting back with rocks, and Molotov cocktails. Protestors were beating soldiers to death for slaughtering civilians. They even covered an armored personnel carrier in various banners and set the vehicle on fire, trapping soldiers left inside.
A doctor at that time reported at least 500 dead and an announcer on the radio said 1,000. The military continued fighting back through the next morning. The dream of a peaceful government has now vanished and was a destructive nightmare. ” (Rayman, 2014) This comes to show just how careless they were of how many people they were killing they sought to destroy and that’s what they did. The differences in the numbers between the doctor and the radio announcer comes to show just how inaccurate they were and unsure of the amount of deaths.
But when you think Tiananmen Square Massacre what do most people usually think of? Usually when people of the Tiananmen Square Massacre they relate it with the “Tank Man”. The tank man to this day almost 30 years later is unknown of who he was. They seem to associate with him of the name of Weng Weilin but the true identity is forever unknown. The unknown man had the nickname of the [“unknown rebel”] (Shin, 2014). When one watches the “Tank Man” video a lot of different things can be interpreted (Makien, 2014).
The few things I have drawn from that rather gritty film is the man blocking tanks on the main avenue June 5th the day after the disturbing massacre. The “lead” tank was moving back and forth trying to go around and the unknown man followed him by the shuffle of his feet. In the video you can see the man climbing up on top of the tank it appears as if he began talking to one of the soldiers inside of the tank. We then see the man being pulled away by either a bystander, police, or a security force which today is also unknown. We are left with so many unanswered question.
Why would you get arrested if you speak of the massacre 30 years later? Why are the amount of deaths unknown? The government doesn’t want to have a repeat of what happened in 1989 at Tiananmen Square. They know that the people didn’t win and they aren’t satisfied with the outcome so they won’t allow people to even bring the subject up in conversation because, people start to question things. Many people don’t know how many people died, could that be because the government in China doesn’t want the citizens to know how many of their own people they left dead on that day?
While the government tried to cover up all the issues it had in China, it was nearly impossible for them to do so seeing how their own citizens weren’t even on their side. One of the reason that the citizens weren’t on their side is because, they watched their family die right in front of them. While the government thought it was a good idea to attack there citizens it only pushed their citizens farther away from the government. Nearly 30 years later we can still say that China isn’t where it hopes to be but it is slowly progressing.
