June 4th and June 5th
Submitted by Robert Daeley on Mon, 2006-06-05 11:33.
June 4, 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, June 4th Incident, or the Political Turmoil between Spring and Summer of 1989 by the Chinese government, were a series of demonstrations led by students, intellectuals and labour activists in the People’s Republic of China between 1989-04-15 and 1989-06-04, leaving (according to Chinese authorities) between 400 and 800 civilians dead, and between 7,000 and 10,000 injured. An initial report from local hospitals put the number at around 2,000 dead….
June 5, 1968
Robert F. Kennedy was fatally wounded by a gunshot in Los Angeles on 1968-06-05, and died 25 hours later. The convicted assassin, 24-year-old Palestinian Christian Sirhan B. Sirhan, attributed the killing to Kennedy’s support for Israel during and after the Six-Day War, although there is no record of RFK supporting Israel during that period. On 1969-03-03, in a Los Angeles, California court, Sirhan admitted that he had killed Kennedy. Sirhan has since recanted, and as late as 1998 has sought a new trial….
retrospective on TAM
I’d like to offer couple references in addition to PBS Frontline’s “The Tank Man”, where it reported the fact students were allowed to leave peacefully once the troops arrived, and Chinese government did investigate this, and release casualty figure of 240 some dead (incidentally in-line with our own NSA intel estimate.)
An article by Gregory Clark on pack journalism:
http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/7702519.html
“the so-called massacre was in fact a mini civil war as irate Beijing citizens sought to stop initially unarmed soldiers sent to remove students who had been demonstrating freely in the square for weeks. When the soldiers finally reached the square there was no massacre.”
An article by Columbia Journal Review on passive journalism:
http://archives.cjr.org/year/98/5/tiananmen.asp
“as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.
…
Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances.”
[Just for reference, throwing molotov cocktail at riot police is a crime in US.]
Revisionism
Not sure what the “available evidence” they’re referring to is, but even the Communist Party of China admits to a couple dozen of civilian casualities. The CIA says a few hundred; the Chinese Red Cross, 2600. Others have the numbers of dead at many thousands. Not to mention the thousands of injuries.
I don’t think anybody with any credibility tries to suggest there were no deaths.