Tiananmen Square: China minister defends 1989 crackdown
China has defended the crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in a rare public acknowledgement of events. Defence Minister Wei Fenghe told a regional forum that stopping the "turbulence" was the "correct" policy.
[...] [After] a wide-ranging speech about trade and security at a regional forum in Singapore, General Wei Fenghe was asked about Tiananmen by a member of the audience. Mr Wei questioned why people still said China had not handled the events properly.
"That incident was a political turbulence and the central government took measures to stop the turbulence, which is a correct policy," he told the forum. "The past 30 years have proven that China has undergone major changes," he said, adding that because of the government's action at that time "China has enjoyed stability and development".
Also at NBC and Al Jazeera.
Thirty years ago, from April 15 to June 4, 1989, the world was gripped by coverage of some of the largest protests in modern Chinese history. As many as a million people occupied the central Tiananmen Square in Beijing in protest against inflation, government corruption, and restrictions on freedom of speech and political participation. There are no official reports on the actual number of dead, though they are estimated to be in the thousands.
In the time that has passed, the uncensorable Usenet is no longer widely used and rarely even available. Mainland Chinese censors have come down hard and heavy on the rest of Net and, later, the Web since then in an ongoing attempt to rewrite a false history. Sometimes this censorship even has the help of the social control media giants who know which side their bread is buttered on.
In commemoration of those events and in particular the massacre culminating the events thirty years ago, here is a partial news round up:
The New York Times: Twitter Takes Down Accounts of China Dissidents Ahead of Tiananmen Anniversary
TechCrunch:
Twitter takes down 'a large number' of Chinese-language accounts ahead of Tiananmen Square anniversary
Reuters: Online encyclopedia Wikipedia blocked in China ahead of Tiananmen anniversary
The South China Morning Post: Wikipedia blocked in China ahead of Tiananmen Square anniversary
CNN: 30 years after Tiananmen massacre, Taiwan shows another way for China
The Straights Times: 'Tank man' video for Leica sparks outcry in China ahead of Tiananmen anniversary
CNN: The story behind the iconic 'Tank Man' photo
New York Times: Photos of the Tiananmen Square Protests Through the Lens of a Student Witness
Reuters: China's robot censors crank up as Tiananmen anniversary nears
Artnet: Chinese Authorities Have Detained an Activist Filmmaker for Posting a Picture Referencing the Tiananmen Square Massacre
The Epoch Times: In Memory of the Tiananmen Square Massacre
The Epoch Times: Photographer Releases Never-Before-Seen Tiananmen Protest Photos
The Daily Beast: Tiananmen Square: Why China's Leaders Want to Erase 'May 35'
Business Insider: China's internet censors are on high alert ahead of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests
CNN: Inflatable 'Tank Man' appears in Taiwan ahead of Tiananmen Square crackdown anniversary
University World News: Tiananmen Square a topic that still can't be studied
The South China Morning Post: 30 years on from Tiananmen Square crackdown, why Beijing still thinks it got it right
Hong Kong Free Press: The Tiananmen Massacre, 30 years on: The troubled history of the Goddess of Democracy
Quartz: Tiananmen Square photos China never wanted the world to see, 30 years later
The Ottawa Citizen: Glavin: Tiananmen Square – China's 30 years of denial and suppression
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday June 03 2019, @04:40AM (9 children)
Can we bring it back?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Monday June 03 2019, @04:47AM (4 children)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday June 03 2019, @05:38AM (3 children)
Looks like the ISPs can block access. That's not good.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Monday June 03 2019, @11:28AM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday June 03 2019, @05:53PM
VPNs are trivial to block also. The protocol is like a lighthouse beacon begging for an attack. The ISP, so far, is impenetrable. But maybe there is a way to piggyback on someone else's signal that is truly unnoticeable. The VPN doesn't quite cut it, doesn't blend.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday June 04 2019, @04:31AM
sdf.org offers Usenet for free (mostly; you need to pay a one time 1-3 USD to validate your account). alt.binaries is not included of course.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03 2019, @04:51AM (1 child)
No. Forget it and never tell the millenials. And do not ever mention the Fidonet.
(Score: 2, Funny) by redneckmother on Monday June 03 2019, @05:07AM
Dammit Ray! (obscure radio talk show reference).
PS. You're showing your age... Uh, duh, I guess I am, too.
Thanks for the Fidonet ref :).
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Monday June 03 2019, @04:56AM (1 child)
And other much underused but useful communications can be found in Freenet, and TOR.
Currently they are primarily used for the darker side of the internet but there is nothing preventing people from using them for whatever purpose they wish. The day may come when we realise the value of secure, or at least difficult to exploit, means of communication.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03 2019, @04:45PM
https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/06/03/0538244/what-would-happen-if-all-encryption-could-be-broken [slashdot.org]
And since it unlikely to be the same person I've been discussing this with, it doesn't require a quantum computer to calculate.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03 2019, @06:42AM (1 child)
Declassified: Chinese official said at least 10,000 civilians died in 1989 Tiananmen massacre, documents show
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/12/21/declassified-chinese-official-said-least-10000-civilians-died-1989-tiananmen-massacre-documents-show/ [hongkongfp.com]
https://twitter.com/plesbilongmi/status/1135399761417080833 [twitter.com]
https://twitter.com/plesbilongmi/status/1135397859975503872 [twitter.com]
Artists who’ve dared to broach Tiananmen pushed into shadows
https://apnews.com/f850f5db726b4b948b7431a6d158a453 [apnews.com]
https://twitter.com/melissakchan/status/1135270812418760704 [twitter.com]
Opinion | When China Massacred Its Own People
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/opinion/sunday/tiananmen-square-protest.html [nytimes.com]
Tiananmen Square footage of lead-up to massacre shows joy, defiance and cake
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-03/footage-shows-joy-in-china-before-tiananmen-square-massacre/11157040 [abc.net.au]
Tremble and Obey
https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/tremble-and-obey/11163142 [abc.net.au]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03 2019, @07:51AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_man [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03 2019, @07:16AM (10 children)
No one remembers the Haymarket Massacre of 1886, nor the Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, nor the May Day Massacre of 1909 in Buenos Aries, the Ludlow massacre of 1914 or the Anaconda Road massacre of 1920. Seems American Capitalist Runnaway Dog Lackeys only want to remember certain massacres. Not that of Greeks who opposed the Nazi regime, like in the Greek village of Distomo, [thejournal.ie] or the many, many Massacres of innocents by capitalists [wikipedia.org] in the modern era.
OK, challenge given. But for your "commies killed more" types, notice we are talking about direct murder, not just people who died by incompetent management. If we include those, capitalism would far outstrip even the Chinese. Tianamun? Give me a break, and go suck John Bolton's war machine.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03 2019, @10:12AM
Drones don't have time to think. They are busy being wage slaves and repeating the mantra "capitalist good, commie baaad".
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday June 03 2019, @10:44AM
Pepperidge Farm remembers.....
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 03 2019, @11:19AM (4 children)
I remember. But you're right that most don't.
Still I think you'd be hard-pressed to match up all the murders of striking coal miners with the systematic liquidation of entire populations and regions by even just the Stalin regime. Heck, even the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia murdered an order of magnitude more than all the "capitalist" murders summed together. When you add up all the deaths ordered by communist/socialist (not getting tied down in the distinction, since most people don't know or care anyway) regimes and forces the conclusion is clear that that is a system of government that should never be tried again by anyone, anywhere.
Now, that does not minimize or excuse the monstrous actions corporations and plutocrats have taken to suppress regular working people. It is infuriating that they get away with what they do. It is something that our next iteration of civilization must stop.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday June 03 2019, @02:59PM (3 children)
Huh? I don't understand the logic there. An economic system doesn't necessarily have anything to do with crazy leaders. I'm not going to defend Socialism; I'm not sure it could ever work practically, but then again, I don't think Democracy can perhaps ever work practically either.
You have a point that a lot of badness has been committed by Socialist/Communist leaders and regimes. GP has a point that a lot of badness has been committed by other forms of government.
But really, badness happens because of corruption, government leaders in systems without checks and balances, etc. Please reference the section in Das Kapital where Marx says it would be a good idea to put a crazy paranoid drunkard (e.g., Stalin) in charge of a nation and give him free rein to conduct secret trials, exile or kill his enemies at will with no oversight or impunity, etc. I'm pretty sure that isn't part of the Socialist ideology.
Blaming that on Socialism is like blaming Obama's and Trump's decisions to order unilateral drone strikes to murder American citizens on Wealth of Nations. No, drone strikes on citizens are based on novel interpretation of law and the failure of checks and balances in government, not Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" reaching out and killing people.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Monday June 03 2019, @05:10PM (2 children)
Ah, the old one about the right people haven't yet been put in charge. But that is the flaw, the "right" people will never be put in charge of an authoritarian system because the wrong people are heavily selected for the position, out competing the "right" people you dream of being given the whip hand, the one who will use it gently... and swiftly have it torn from his grasp by a monster. Or become a monster himself as he realizes it is the only way to survive.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Every time. Until you understand that you are a menace so long as you are permitted to vote.
Of course it can't. Every serious political thinker from the earliest fragments of written works to today agree that Democracy is a horrible idea that always ends in bloodshed. Yes, the very same "leaders" who insist we have a Democracy and must "preserve Democracy", "export Democracy" etc. have generally been educated enough to know they are deceiving. Ask questions, fear the answers. Dark times ahead.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Monday June 03 2019, @06:12PM (1 child)
> > An economic system doesn't necessarily have anything to do with crazy leaders.
> Ah, the old one about the right people haven't yet been put in charge
Well, technically, in a true socialist system (never existed at scale, likely never will), the people are in charge, and the guys delegated are just doing the busy work of implementing.
> the "right" people will never be put in charge of an authoritarian system because the wrong people are heavily selected for the position
By definition. Putting a gentle leader is a sign that your authoritarian system is collapsing, and the Haves are trying to save their assets from an unavoidable change.
> Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Every time.
I'll raise one exception : Absolute hereditary monarchy, in a non-conquest state.
The monarch guaranteed to pass his assets to his descendants, as long as he does a decent job of maintaining the peace in his land, does not need to plunder his own people. One is not corruptible if one owns everything they desire.
You might argue that his power isn't absolute he he can't go warring against the neighbor (who was traditionally at least his second-cousin), but at least absolute applies to his own people.
> Until you understand that you are a menace so long as you are permitted to vote.
Unless your vote is properly pre- or -post- processed, making it irrelevant.
A few systems are thriving under this arrangement.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday June 04 2019, @04:40AM
Absolute monarchy, if you get a wise king, is the best form of government yet to be actually implemented. It's flaw is that no system to select kings has proven much better than random selection. Hereditary included. One would think a king could raise up a son from birth, with everyone knowing him to be the future king, could assure he received suitable instruction and would be a competent ruler. History says nah. Debate why that is, believe you could fix it when countless Kings had a lot more reason to get it right than you do, the history books still say it is a bad idea too.
Hereditary monarchs seem to be prone to a different form of corruption. Raised from birth they can often handle the raw power, but the lack of any external limit leads them to a multitude of other sins that end up destroying them along with their kingdom.
Problem is we just don't have an answer to the government problem.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03 2019, @11:19AM (1 child)
Tienanmen is always brought up because the CURRENT government of china actively suppress internal discussion on the subject, which happened while most people alive were already born.
The events you brought up are more than 100 years old, happened during completely different governments, in very different societies than today, and none of those governments, even if they are not putting it in clear sight, are not bending backwards trying to hide it.
And china is NOT a communist country, not by far, it is very capitalist, just has a veneer of communist put on top.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday June 04 2019, @12:18AM
The "veneer" of Communism is no more than just the name of the ruling party.
China is no more Communist than the UK or France or the United States. China is what is known as state run capitalism.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 04 2019, @11:42AM
So we're going to start this game by citing stuff over 130 years ago and which killed somewhere around 3 orders of magnitude less people? What merits this particular case being remembered as well as the Tiananmen Square crackdown?
Sure they would. I'll note that you linked to anti-communist mass killings not pro-capitalist mass killings. There's more ideologies in the world than Communism and Capitalism. For example, Nazis and Kuomintang weren't Capitalist. Yet they killed lots of Communists.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday June 03 2019, @08:44AM (4 children)
Care to comment?
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Monday June 03 2019, @08:53AM (1 child)
Any crickets care to comment? 🦗
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03 2019, @05:57PM
Chinese ate 'em all.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 03 2019, @12:37PM (1 child)
I was in Beijing in 1997. I showed the image of the man facing down the tanks to my Chinese roommate (it's one of the most moving images I've ever seen). He had never seen it, and had scarcely heard of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square. He had only heard of "some trouble" because he had relatives in Beijing (he himself was not local).
That's it. That's all the Chinese know, and that was 22 years ago. It has to have vanished completely from their memories by now.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quietus on Monday June 03 2019, @02:55PM
I knew a woman -- part of a batch of Chinese exchange students at my university -- back in the day when it was still the habit to send a political commissar along (1994). She had been part of the protests, but claimed not to have witnessed any violence. When she returned to Beijing, she was given a "place at the window" because she had supported her professor, who was critical for the Three Gorges Dam project.
If you've been in China, you know how all-important not losing face is. The Chinese remember, into detail. It's just that they've learned the difference between public and private thoughts over centuries, in the harshest way possible.
The general's true message is meant for online consumption.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RamiK on Monday June 03 2019, @10:39AM
He isn't blaming the CIA. He isn't pointing the finger at Muslim terrorists. He isn't saying Mossad was behind it. It's not the "previous regime's fault". He isn't talking about a capitalist conspiracy. He isn't talking about enemies of the revolution...
Was he it right to justify the massacre? Absolutely not. The ends don't justify the means. But at least he's acknowledging the events and is trying to make a utilitarian moral argument around the events by pointing to the continues prosperity of the country.
Compared to how most western democracies (and especially the US) refuse to address economic problems while constantly looking for ways to divide the people and blame their problems on this or that minority / foreign nation, it's quite the step-up.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 04 2019, @11:42AM
WSWS republishes ICFI statements on Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989 [wsws.org]
The ICFI statements are here: Victory to the Political Revolution in China [wsws.org]