News Literacy
Provisional Truth-assignment
En, Vicky, Hassah, & Hashem
Tiananmen Square
There is a small group of people in Beijing to create the unrest in on June 3, 1989. The students protests in front of the Tiananmen square and development of counter- revolutionary riots. The troops stationed around the city of Beijing were ordered to quell the riots. On the morning after four days, the martial law troops stationed in Tiananmen Square to clear the field at the same time, to quell the riots.
Timeline:
April 15, 1989 - 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.
April 18, 1989 - Thousands of mourning students march through the capital to Tiananmen Square, calling for a more democratic government. In the weeks that follow, thousands of people join the students in the square to protest against China's Communist rulers.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/cron/
May 19, 1989 - A rally at Tiananmen Square draws an estimated 1.2 million people. General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhao Ziyang, appears at the rally and pleads for an end to the demonstrations.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/world/asia/tiananmen-square-fast-facts/
June 4, 1989 - At about 1 a.m. Chinese troops reach Tiananmen Square. Throughout the day, Chinese troops fire on civilians and students, ending the demonstrations. An official death toll has never been released.
June 1, 1999 - The National Security Archive publish” Tiananmen Square,1989: The Declassified History.” The archive includes U.S. State Department documents related to the events that took place during the demonstrations.
Summary and Facts
Many students protested for around three weeks after that a massacre happened. The chinese government's military started to kill the protests. One day after the massacre, unknown man with a white shirt and a shopping bag was seen standing in front of the tanks. He tried to stop them and have a conversation. However, still this incident a mysterious one and it is hard to investigate because it is one of the most taboo case in China that no one can talk about up to today. Furthermore, many new generation after that incident don't know about it unless someone from that day could tell them. Also, the government up to now hunts the protests from 6/4 incident.