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Clearing the square |
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At the Square, soldiers and students initially attempted to show restraint, but residents refused to follow student orders. Soldiers did not fight back at first after some citizens threw rocks at them. |
In the early morning on 4 June, the first APC entered Tiananmen Square from Chang'an West Boulevard. Demonstrators attacked the APC with molotov cocktails and immobilised it with a traffic divider, before covering it with gasoline-doused blankets and setting it on fire. Wu Renhua claims that after the three occupants were forced out of the vehicle by the heat, students escorted the three men to a medic station. However, according to an eyewitness account of a Chinese-American reporter, the soldiers were attacked by the crowd: Two soldiers were burned alive inside the APC, and a third was beaten to death in full view of other soldiers. Larry Wortzel, a military intelligence officer at the U.S. Embassy at the time, noted that the demonstrators' swarming tactics were clearly rehearsed and practiced, having been used similarly in other places around the city. |
Troops from the west arrived at the square at about 1:30 am, and troops from other directions gradually arrived as well, blocking main roads to the square to prevent entry. A second emergency announcement from the government was broadcast on loudspeakers: |
A severe counterrevolutionary riot has broken out in the capital tonight. Rioters have savagely attacked soldiers of the PLA, have stolen their weapons and burned their vehicles, have erected roadblocks, and have kidnapped officers and soldiers [...] Citizens and students must |
evacuate the Square immediately so that martial law troops can successfully carry out their mission. We cannot guarantee the safety of violators, who will be solely responsible for any consequences. |
— Emergency Announcement, Beijing Municipal Government and Martial Law Command |
After the announcement, most people in the square began to leave, and by 2:00 am, there were only a few thousand demonstrators in the square. North of the square, a dozen students and citizens attempted to torch army trucks with cans of gasoline but were arrested. |
At 3:00 am, Hou Dejian, Liu Xiaobo, Zhou |
Duo, and Gao Xin decided to convince the students to evacuate the square; Chai Ling, however, insisted that "those who wish to leave may leave, and those who don't may stay." The group asked Chai Ling and other student leaders to negotiate a peaceful evacuation. Hou Dejian addressed the students by loudspeaker, urging them to leave the square and surrender their rifles and other weapons, before leaving with Zhou Duo in an ambulance to meet the government troops. |
Between 3:30 and 3:45 am, the ambulance arrived at the Museum of Chinese History in the northeast corner of the square, and Hou Dejian and Zhou Duo met with Ji Xinguo, a regimental political commissar. They requested that the army give them time to evacuate, and to open a path for them to leave. Ji Xinguo relayed their request to Martial Law Headquarters, who agreed to the students' request. Ji Xinguo informed them of this and told them to exit to the south. After Hou and Zhou returned to the square, they called for an immediate evacuation, and the Martial Law Headquarters announced, "Students, we appreciate that you will leave the Square voluntarily. Students, please leave in the southeastern direction." |
There was initial reluctance among the students to leave, but as the deadline approached, Feng Congde asked students for a voice vote on whether to stay or leave. Although the vote's results were inconclusive, Feng said the vote to leave was louder. The demonstrators began to evacuate, with students leaving under their school banners, heading southeast. At about 4:35 am, a few minutes after the demonstrators started to retreat, the lights in the square were turned on, and troops began to advance. A squad of commandos charged up the monument and shot out the students' loudspeaker. According to Hou Dejian, tear gas was used during the operation to clear the square. |
At 5:23 am, a Chinese unit crushed the Goddess of Democracy statue, removing its severed torch first as a memento. |
Having removed the students from the square, soldiers were ordered to relinquish their ammunition, after which they were allowed a short reprieve, from 7 am to 9 am. The debris left over from the student occupation was either piled and burnt on the square or placed in large plastic bags that were then airlifted away by military helicopters. After the cleanup, the troops stationed at The Great Hall of the People remained confined within for the next nine days. During this time, the soldiers were apparently left to sleep on the floors and were daily supplied a single packet of instant noodles shared between three men. |
In the city |
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Just past 6 am on 4 June, as a convoy of students who had vacated the square were walking westward in the bicycle lane along Chang'an Avenue back to campus, three tanks pursued them from the square, firing tear gas. One tank was said to have driven through the crowd, killing 11 students and injuring scores of others. |
By dawn, the sky was enveloped with smoke rising from the centre of the city, and the streets were filled with burned-out vehicles. Skirmishes between protesters and troops continued sporadically in the city. Some demonstrators regrouped and attempted to re-enter the square from the northeast on East Chang'an Avenue, but were driven off by gunfire. The square remained closed to the public for two weeks. |
At 17:00, a sitrep from the U.S. State Department to the U.S. Embassy indicated that the PLA was "mopping up isolated resistance". |
5 June and the Tank Man |
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On June 5, having secured the square, the military began to reassert control over thoroughfares through the city, especially Chang'an Avenue. A column of tanks of the 1st Armored Division left the square and, heading east on Chang'an Avenue, came upon a lone protester standing in the middle of the avenue. The brief standoff between the man and the tanks was captured by Western media atop the Beijing Hotel. After returning to his position in front of the tanks, the man was pulled aside by a group of people. Charlie Cole, who was there for Newsweek, claimed that the men were Chinese government agents, while Jan Wong, who was there for The Globe and Mail, thought that they were concerned bystanders. |
Although the fate of Tank Man following the demonstration is not known, paramount Chinese leader Jiang Zemin stated in 1990 that he did not think the man was killed. Time later named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. |
A stopped convoy of 37 APCs on Changan Boulevard at Muxidi was forced to abandon their vehicles after becoming stuck among an assortment of burned-out buses and military vehicles. In addition to occasional incidents of soldiers opening fire on civilians in Beijing, Western news outlets reported clashes between units of the PLA. Late in the afternoon, 26 tanks, three armored personnel carriers, and supporting infantry took up defensive positions facing east at Jianguomen and Fuxingmen overpasses. Shellfire was heard throughout the night, and the next morning a United States Marine in the eastern part of the city reported spotting a damaged armored vehicle that an armor-piercing shell had disabled. The ongoing turmoil in the capital disrupted everyday life flow. No editions of the People's Daily were available in Beijing on 5 June, despite assurances that they had been printed. Many shops, offices, and factories were not able to open, as workers remained in their homes, and public transit services were limited to the subway and suburban bus routes. |
By and large, the government regained control in the week following the square's military seizure. A political purge followed in which officials responsible for organizing or condoning the protests were removed, and protest leaders were jailed. |
Protests outside Beijing |
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After order was restored in Beijing on 4 June, protests of various sizes continued in some 80 other Chinese cities outside the international press's spotlight. In the British colony of Hong Kong, people again took to wearing black in solidarity with the demonstrators in Beijing. There were also protests in other countries, where many adopted the wearing of black armbands as well. |
In Shanghai, students marched on the streets on 5 June and erected roadblocks on major thoroughfares. Public transport including railway traffic was blocked. On 6 June, the municipal government tried to clear the rail blockade, but it was met with fierce resistance from the crowds. Several people were killed from being run over by a train. On 7 June, students from major Shanghai universities stormed various campus facilities to erect biers. Although there were rumors of possible martial law in the city, the situation was gradually brought under control without deadly force. The municipal government gained recognition from the top leadership in Beijing for averting a major upheaval. |
In the interior cities of Xi'an, Wuhan, Nanjing, and Chengdu, many students continued protests after 4 June, often erecting roadblocks. In Xi'an, students stopped workers from entering factories. In Wuhan, students blocked the Yangtze River Railway bridge and another 4,000 gathered at the railway station. About one thousand students staged a railroad "sit-in", and rail traffic on the Beijing-Guangzhou and Wuhan-Dalian lines was interrupted. The students also urged employees of major state-owned enterprises to go on strike. In Wuhan, the situation was so tense that residents reportedly began a bank run and resorted to panic buying. |
Government's pronouncements |
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At a news conference on 6 June, State Council spokesperson Yuan Mu announced that based on "preliminary statistics", "nearly 300 people died ... includ[ing] soldiers", 23 students, "bad elements who deserve[d] this because of their crimes, and people who were killed by mistake." He said the wounded included "5,000 [police] officers and [soldiers]" and over "2,000 civilians, including the handful of lawless ruffians and the onlooking masses who do understand the situation." Military spokesperson Zhang Gong stated that no one was killed in Tiananmen Square and no one was run over by tanks in the square. |
On 9 June, Deng Xiaoping, appearing in public for the first time since the protests began, delivered a speech praising the "martyrs" (PLA soldiers who had died). Deng stated that the goal of the student movement was to overthrow the party and the state. Of the protesters, Deng said: "Their goal is to establish a totally Western-dependent bourgeois republic." Deng argued that protesters had complained about corruption to cover their real motive, replacing the socialist system. He said that "the entire imperialist Western world plans to make all socialist countries discard the socialist road and then bring them under the monopoly of international capital and onto the capitalist road." |
Death toll |
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From the end of the events on, the number of people who died in the square itself has been in dispute. The government actively suppressed discussion of casualty figures immediately after the events, and estimates rely heavily on eyewitness testimony, hospital records, and organised efforts by victims' relatives. As a result, large discrepancies exist among various casualty estimates. Initial estimates ranged from the official figure of a few hundred to several thousand. |
Official figures |
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Official government announcements shortly after the event put the number who died at around 300. At the State Council press conference on 6 June, spokesman Yuan Mu said that "preliminary tallies" by the government showed that about 300 civilians and soldiers died, including 23 students from universities in Beijing, along with some people he described as "ruffians". Yuan also said some 5,000 soldiers and police were wounded, along with 2,000 civilians. On 19 June, Beijing Party Secretary Li Ximing reported to the Politburo that the government's confirmed death toll was 241, including 218 civilians (of which 36 were students), 10 PLA soldiers, and 13 People's Armed Police, along with 7,000 wounded. On 30 June, Mayor Chen Xitong said that the number of injured was around 6,000. |
Other estimates |
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On the morning of 4 June, many estimates of deaths were reported, including from government-affiliated sources. Peking University leaflets circulated on campus suggested a death toll of between two and three thousand. There were rumors that the Chinese Red Cross had given a figure of 2,600 deaths, but the organisation denied having given such a figure. The Swiss Ambassador had estimated 2,700. Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times wrote on 21 June that "it seems plausible that about a dozen soldiers and policemen were killed, along with 400 to 800 civilians." United States ambassador James Lilley said that, based on visits to hospitals around Beijing, a minimum of several hundred had been killed. A declassified National Security Agency cable filed on the same day estimated 180–500 deaths up to the morning of 4 June. Beijing hospital records compiled shortly after the events recorded at least 478 dead and 920 wounded. Amnesty International's estimates put the number of deaths at between several hundred and close to 1,000, while a Western diplomat who compiled estimates put the number at 300 to 1,000. |
In a disputed cable sent in the aftermath of the events at Tiananmen, British Ambassador Alan Donald initially claimed, based on information from a "good friend" in the State Council of China, that a minimum of 10,000 civilians died, claims which were repeated in a speech by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, but which is an estimated number much higher than other sources provided. After the declassification, former student protest leader Feng Congde pointed out that Donald later revised his estimate to 2,700–3,400 deaths, a number closer to, but still much higher than, other estimates. |
Identifying the dead |
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The Tiananmen Mothers, a victims' advocacy group co-founded by Ding Zilin and Zhang Xianling, whose children were killed by the government during the crackdown, have identified 202 victims as of August 2011. In the face of government interference, the group has worked painstakingly to locate victims' families and collect information about the victims. Their tally had grown from 155 in 1999 to 202 in 2011. The list includes four individuals who committed suicide on or after 4 June for reasons related to their involvement in the demonstrations. |
Deaths around and in Tiananmen Square itself |
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Government officials have long asserted that no one died in the square in the early morning hours of 4 June, during the "hold-out" of students' last batch in the south part of the square. Initially, foreign media reports of a "massacre" on the square were prevalent, though subsequently, journalists have acknowledged that most of the deaths occurred outside of the square in western Beijing. Several people who were situated around the square that night, including former Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post Jay Mathews and CBS correspondent Richard Roth reported that while they had heard sporadic gunfire, they could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the square. |
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