Jeff Widener, an American photographer with the Associated Press, won a pulitzer prize for that photo, precisely because it was a still image. He also took a video, but the video tends not to be shown, because it reveals that the man wasn’t run over. Then you have the fact that all the US press corps showed up right as the protests took off, a lot of dark money from NGOs and western think tanks was floating around, and then deliberate conflation of the worker riots (in which PLA troops were lynched outside the square) being confused with the mostly peaceful events inside the square. Then you have that interview with the protest leader where she was crying and basically saying she was trying to provoke a massacre so that the protesters could be seen as martyrs. She got her wish, even if the massacres didn’t actually occur, since that’s how the west depicts those events. Then there the highly suspicious fact that nobody talks about the fact that you had many different types of protester simultaneously. Some were opposed to liberal reforms, privatization, etc, (the workers rioting outside the square) while other protesters wanted more of that stuff (the student protesters inside the square). Then you have some racist elements mixed in with the student protests I’ve heard, i.e. that there were some Chinese who were protesting because they didn’t like the presence of African exchange students at their universities. I don’t know how true that is, but I’ve heard it a few times.
Agitprop repost from the massive china thread done two months or so ago:
wikileaks published a private diplomatic cable stating that no one was killed in the square itself, although a smaller number of people did die in clashes elsewhere in Beijing, consistent with China’s own official account. (Here’s a Telegraph article on the cables).
tank man: the tanks in the video are leaving the square (you can see this in the uncropped footage) and it is broad daylight, whereas the main violence occurred at night.
the violence against troops was uncharacteristic of the previous tone of interactions between troops and protesters in the preceding weeks. Troops and protesters had peacefully coexisted, singing songs and sharing food together. (Here’s an article that goes into it a bit)
Then you have some racist elements mixed in with the student protests I’ve heard, i.e. that there were some Chinese who were protesting because they didn’t like the presence of African exchange students at their universities. I don’t know how true that is, but I’ve heard it a few times
Concerns over prices weren’t solely due to absolute levels of privation, however. The complaints were heavily tinged with elitism. Students and urbanites were not happy to see peasants and farmers do so well relative to them. This “economic anxiety” had manifested itself a year earlier in Nanjing, where students affected by cuts to tuition subsidies took out their anger on African exchange students. “From December 1988 to January 1989, students in Nanjing, China waged violent protests against visiting African students.” The writing on the placards was very revealing:
Jeff Widener, an American photographer with the Associated Press, won a pulitzer prize for that photo, precisely because it was a still image. He also took a video, but the video tends not to be shown, because it reveals that the man wasn’t run over. Then you have the fact that all the US press corps showed up right as the protests took off, a lot of dark money from NGOs and western think tanks was floating around, and then deliberate conflation of the worker riots (in which PLA troops were lynched outside the square) being confused with the mostly peaceful events inside the square. Then you have that interview with the protest leader where she was crying and basically saying she was trying to provoke a massacre so that the protesters could be seen as martyrs. She got her wish, even if the massacres didn’t actually occur, since that’s how the west depicts those events. Then there the highly suspicious fact that nobody talks about the fact that you had many different types of protester simultaneously. Some were opposed to liberal reforms, privatization, etc, (the workers rioting outside the square) while other protesters wanted more of that stuff (the student protesters inside the square). Then you have some racist elements mixed in with the student protests I’ve heard, i.e. that there were some Chinese who were protesting because they didn’t like the presence of African exchange students at their universities. I don’t know how true that is, but I’ve heard it a few times.
Agitprop repost from the massive china thread done two months or so ago:
From Another View of Tiananmen: