(Among
the more tragic stories I covered in my career was the Tiananmen Square
tragedy—or massacre—depending on one’s perspective. It occurred 24 years ago in
the world’s largest square with much of the world watching. Here are my
recollections of that terrible night—one that I shall never forget.)
In just a few days (June 6 & 7) Chinese President
Xi Jinping and President Obama will meet in Rancho Mirage, Cal. in an effort to hammer out what has been
called a "new type of major power relationship" and to deal with the
mutual suspicion that exists between the U.S. and China.
One could argue that a lot of the
tension that exists between China and the U.S. can be traced back to the
summer of 1989 when several hundred thousand students, labor leaders and other dissidents
occupied the 5 million square foot concrete piazza known as Tiananmen Square in
the heart of Beijing. For seven weeks as the world watched, some 500,000 “pro-democracy”
demonstrators descended on Beijing’s most sacred site to protest corruption,
human rights violations and one-party rule.
The protest would ultimately end in
the early morning hours of June 4 with the deaths of at least 800 demonstrators
(the Chinese Red Cross puts the number closer to 3,000 with 12,000 wounded) in
what the world has come to know as the “Tiananmen Square Massacre.”
Today all evidence of that bloody
night has been obliterated. Tiananmen Square is scrubbed and shimmering as it
awaits the hundreds of thousands of visitors who will wander past the colossal portrait
of Mao Zedong that hangs above the Gate of Heavenly Peace on the north end of
the plaza and through the mausoleum that displays his waxy remains on the south
end.
However, that was neither the mood nor
the scene in 1989 when Tiananmen Square was turned into a squalid, fetid tent
city of protestors.
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| Students Occupying Tiananmen Square May 1989 |
Today, for many young Chinese, the
tragedy that unfolded in Tiananmen Square 24 years ago is ancient history—an
event that has been glossed over, covered up and generally purged from the
national consciousness.
But on June 3, 1989 as I walked
through what is generally regarded as the planet’s largest city square the
world was just a few hours from seeing China at its most ruthless and ugliest.
What follows is a personal eyewitness
account of the events leading up to and including the attack on Tiananmen
Square—a night that remains indelibly etched in my memory.
The square that day was a hot,
grubby place, strewn with refuse, canvass tents and other makeshift dwellings.
Under the towering “Heroes of the Nation”
obelisk demonstrators cooked rice and soup while others linked arms and sang a
spirited rendition of the “Internationale,” the world socialist anthem. Thousands
of others dozed under flimsy lean-tos or blasted music from boom boxes.
Near the middle of the square, the
30-foot tall “Goddess of Democracy,”
a pasty white statue constructed by art students and made of styrofoam and
papier-mâché, stared defiantly at Mao’s
giant portrait—almost mocking the founder of modern day China. A truck swept by
periodically spraying billowing clouds of insecticide and disinfectant over
everything and everybody in its path.
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| The Goddess of Liberty |
Hawkers guiding pushcarts containing
ice cream, soft drinks, rice cakes, candy and film encircled the students doing
a brisk business. Even if the students in the square had not been able to
topple China's ruling hierarchy, at least there were profits to be made.
One enterprising entrepreneur raked
in several hundred yuan within a few minutes after he began renting stepping
stools for the thousands of amateur photographers and tourists who arrived to
have their pictures taken next to students or at the base of the "Goddess of Democracy" statue.
Tiananmen, I wrote at the time, had evolved into a “Disneyland of Dissent.”
By June 3 the number of students
occupying the square had dwindled to about 20,000 as thousands had already
packed up and headed back to their provinces. But some students I talked with that
afternoon were not ready to leave and a few shared an intense sense of foreboding.
One of those was Chai Ling.
Chai, who had been elected
"chief commander" by the dissidents, was the only woman among the
seven student leaders of the pro-democracy protests. As we sat cross-legged on
the hot pavement she talked about the protests and just what the students had
accomplished during their 7-week-long occupation of Tiananmen.
“There will be a price to pay for
all of this,” the 23-year-old child psychology graduate warned, tears streaming
down her cheeks. “Some people will have to die for democracy, but it will be
worth it.”
Chai, the object of a year-long
nationwide search by the Chinese government after the violence in the square,
would eventually escape China to Hong Kong sealed for five days and nights in a
wooden crate
in the hold of a rickety
ship. She managed to elude capture in China by adopting a series of disguises,
by learning local Chinese dialects and by working variously as a rice farmer,
laborer and maid. Eventually she would come to the United States, be nominated
for the Nobel Peace Prize and graduate from the Harvard Business School.
Barely eight hours after my
conversation with Chai her warning would become reality. Late in the evening of
June 3 and during the early morning hours of June 4 the lethargy of weary demonstrators
and the cacophonic concert of boom box music would be replaced by shrieks of
terror, gunfire and the guttural roar of tank and armored personnel carrier engines
as the People’s Liberation Army rolled into the square, crushing tents and firing
indiscriminately at protestors and anybody else who got in their way.
A couple of hours before the
violence erupted a few of us foreign correspondents had enjoyed a quiet meal
together in the venerable Beijing Hotel on Chang’an Avenue a few blocks from
the square.
While dining we discussed the events
of the night before when several thousand young unarmed military recruits were
sent marching toward the students in Tiananmen Square. Before they got very far
an estimated 100,000 Chinese civilians poured from their homes near the square and
confronted the soldiers—berating them for even thinking of entering Tiananmen
to clear it of the thousands of students who had occupied it since late April.
This rather benign event was nothing
more than a probe to determine what kind of resistance armed troops might face
when they stormed the square. For several weeks some 200,000 Chinese
troops—most from provinces far away from Beijing—had been massing on the
outskirts of the city.
As Beijing entered its 15th day of
martial law, it was also obvious that the government was still unable to
enforce that decree. The government did admonish members of the foreign media
to "observe regulations on news coverage" as they relate to martial
law.
"Foreign journalists must not
talk with student protesters and any news coverage of any kind in Beijing must
receive prior approval," said a statement by Ding Weijun, spokesman for
the city.
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| Students asleep in the Square |
The statement also warned the
hundreds of foreign reporters still in Beijing against inviting Chinese
citizens to their offices, homes or hotels to conduct "interviews
regarding prohibited activities." Several foreign reporters had been
expelled from the country for violating those rules.
The morning of June 3, ignoring
marital law rules, I had driven outside of the square and into several
neighborhoods where streets leading toward Tiananmen had been shut down by
angry civilians intent on keeping the Chinese Army from reaching the students.
Dozens of intersections were blocked with buses, trucks, and makeshift
barricades. Neighborhood leaders proudly showed me their arsenal of weapons—rows
of gasoline-filled bottles complete with cloth wicks, piles of rocks and
bricks, shovels, rakes, picks and other garden tools.
“We will protect the students,” a
man named Liang
Hong, told me.
“But how?” I asked. “The army has
tanks, machine guns and armored personnel carriers. They will kill you.”
“Then we will die,” he replied.
Several dozen others quickly echoed his words. “Yes, we will all die. These are
our children in the square. We must help them even if it means death.”
Several days after the attack on the
square when the authorities allowed people to travel once again in the city, I
drove back to this same neighborhood. True to their word, I was told that Liang Hong
and several of his neighbors had died or were wounded attempting to keep the
army from entering the square.
After dinner in the Beijing Hotel I
decided to take one more stroll through the square. As I rode into the square
on the red and white Sprick bicycle I
had purchased after my arrival in Beijing from Tokyo two weeks before, I could
see that many of the students were obviously spooked—not only by the unarmed incursion
of the night before but by the intelligence pouring in from the neighborhoods
surrounding the square that the army was on the move.
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| The Author on his Sprick Bike |
“I think something will happen
tonight,” one of them told me. “I am very afraid.”
I stopped at the foot of the Goddess
of Democracy. The statue was illuminated by a couple of small spotlights as it
looked toward the Forbidden City and Mao’s
portrait. On the edge of the square I bought a bottle of Coca Cola then pushed
my bicycle toward the four-story KFC restaurant on the south end of the square.
It was about 8:30 p.m. and the restaurant (the largest KFC store in the world)
was almost empty.
I then rode the 2 miles down
Jinguomenwei Avenue to the Jinguo Hotel where I was staying. I needed to file a
story on the day’s events—specifically my conversation with Chai Ling
and the other students that afternoon. I finished writing my story around 10
p.m. and decided, despite the curfew, to ride my bicycle back to the square for
one more look around. I parked my bicycle on Xuanwumen Dong Avenue near the
hulking Museum of History and Revolution
on the east side of the square and began walking toward the “Heroes of the Nation” obelisk which had
become the headquarters for the students.
I hadn’t gotten very far when the
sound of gunfire erupted. The firing seemed everywhere, amplified by the
massive buildings that surrounded the square. I ran toward my bicycle, not
wanting to be trapped in the square should tanks roll in. Moments later I ran
into BBC correspondent Kate
Adie who was walking toward the
square with her camera crew.
“What’s going on,” she asked.
“Looks like the army is making a
move tonight,” I answered. I explained that I hadn’t seen any troops or tanks
in the square at that point, but I did see muzzle flashes from the roof of the
Great Hall of the People on the west side of the square. A day before several
hundred troops had massed behind the Great Hall and I assumed they had been
positioned on the roof.
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| THE iconic photo of the Tiananmen Square Massacre |
I rode my bicycle north toward
Chang’an Avenue and hadn’t gotten very far when I noticed a line of Armored Personnel
Carriers moving toward the square flanked by hundreds of soldiers with fixed
bayonets. Seconds later the dark sky was interlaced by red and yellow tracer
fire and I could hear bullets ricocheting off of concrete. I turned my bike
around and raced back toward the south end of the square. Like a lot of my
fellow correspondents I never thought the government would use deadly force
against the students.
As the firing intensified thousands more
residents poured out of their houses and formed human blockades where streets
entered the square. They quickly became targets for the machine gun and small
arms fire. As the casualties mounted, the crowds became increasingly
belligerent. They armed themselves with bricks, bottles, iron rods and wooden
clubs and attacked some of the military contingents, including tanks.
An infuriated mob grabbed one
soldier and set him afire after dousing him with gasoline. They then hung his
still smoldering body from a pedestrian overpass. It was one of the many
examples of instant justice. The crowd accused the soldier of having shot an
old woman to death.
I watched the wounded and the dead
being carted from the square and the area surrounding it on the flatbeds of
three-wheeled vehicles through a pall of smoke. The stinging stench of tear gas
hovered over the embattled city and burned my eyes.
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| Wounded students are taken from square |
“Tell the world!” the crowds
screamed at me and other foreign journalists. “Tell the United States! Tell the
truth! We are students! We are common people-unarmed, and they are killing us!”
Around 2 a.m. at the height of the
armed assault, a maverick tank careened down Jianguomenwai Avenue in an attempt
to crack open the way for troop convoys unable to pass through the milling
crowds.
With its turret closed, the tank was
bombarded with stones and bottles as it sped down the avenue. Young cyclists
headed it off, then slowed to bring it to a halt. But the tank raced on, the
cyclists deftly avoiding its clattering treads by mere inches.
On the Jianguomenwai bridge over the
city's main ring road, where a 25-truck convoy had been marooned for hours by a
mass of angry civilians clambering all over it, a tank raced through the crowd.
It sideswiped one of the army trucks, and a young soldier clinging to its side
was flung off and killed instantly.
The worst fighting of the night
occurred around the Minzu Hotel, west of the square, where grim-faced troops
opened fire with tracer bullets and live ammunition on crowds blocking
their access to the square. Bullets ripped into the crowd and scores of people
were wounded. The dead and wounded were thrown on the side of the road among a
pile of abandoned bicycles as the troops moved on to take the square.
One tank ran into the back of
another that had stalled on Chang’an Avenue. As they hurriedly bounced apart,
the machine guns on their turrets began to train on an approaching crowd of
about 10,000. The machine guns erupted, sending tracers above the heads of the
crowd. Men and women scurried for cover, many crawling into the piles of dead
and wounded along the side of the road.
In my haste to return to the square
I had forgotten to bring my camera. Even though it was night, the square was
illuminated by street lamps and the sky above it was lit almost continuously with
tracers and bright flares. I decided not to ride my bicycle in order to avoid becoming
a larger target. At the same time, I didn’t want to lose the only form of
transportation I had, so I pushed it wherever I went, sometimes crouching
behind it. Finally, I found a small tree and padlocked it to the trunk.
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| People moved cautiously during the night attack |
For most of the night I found myself
caught between trying to cover the tragedy unfolding in and around the square
and watching my back. I didn’t want to be caught in the sites of some trigger
happy soldier.
At one point several hundred troops
successfully occupied a corner of the square and I watched as a crowd of some 3,000
howling unarmed students surged toward them on foot and by bicycle, intent on
breaking through their line with their bare hands. A few in front of the main
body rammed their bikes into the troops and were quickly beaten to the ground
by soldiers using the butts of their rifles or clubs.
“Fascists! Murderers!” the crowd
chanted.
As the main body of the crowd got within
50 yards of the first line of troops, an army commander blew a whistle and the
soldiers turned and fired volleys of automatic rifle fire. Screams of pain
followed.
The protesters threw themselves and
their bikes on the pavement of the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Dragging their
bikes behind them, they crawled to safety, pursued by rifle fire and the
throaty war cries of the soldiers.
When the firing momentarily stopped,
the crowd regrouped and slowly crept back toward the square. Then the volleys
rang out again, more intense this time. Two lines of soldiers began to chase
the mob, alternately firing tear gas and bullets. I watched several people
stagger and fall to the ground.
The acrid smell of tear gas triggered
a paroxysm of coughing in the crowd. People ripped off shirt sleeves and used
them as handkerchiefs over their mouths. The bodies of three women were laid
out on the pavement of a side street to await transport. A crowd gathered
around them, waving fists and cursing the government.
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| The attack on the Square begins |
“How many people did you kill?” they
shouted at steel-helmeted soldiers who stood stonily with AK-47 assault rifles
cradled across their chests.
The fighting continued throughout
the night as exhausted students and other dissidents engaged in hit and run
battles with soldiers, tanks and APC’s. Some students, many of them wounded,
scrambled aboard abandoned buses seeking refuge and aid. I watched soldiers
pull them out and beat them with heavy clubs.
Several of the students, bleeding
from head wounds, ran toward where I had taken cover behind a low stone wall.
One of the students, a girl of maybe 16, had been shot through the shoulder and
was bleeding profusely. She was falling in and out of consciousness and looked
to be in shock. I looked behind me to see if there was some way to get her
assistance. In the distance I saw a man waving at me from a doorway of a brick
wall. He was motioning me to bring the girl and other wounded students to him,
all the while carefully watching for soldiers. I pulled her up and with the
help of another reporter, dashed with her and several other wounded students to
the gate. The man quickly wrapped a blanket around the girl and took her inside
the compound with the other students.
“Thank you,” he said. “I am a
doctor. I will take care of them.”
I jogged back to the low wall where
I had been kneeling before. I recall thinking that if I were wounded at least I
now knew where I could go for help. For the next few hours I moved from one
location to another, trying to find a spot where I could see what was happening
while making sure I had an escape route should I come under fire.
The square was finally cleared at
dawn when four personnel carriers raced across it, flattening not only the
tents of the demonstrators but the “Goddess
of Liberty” statue. I looked at my watch. It was about 5:30 in the morning
and dawn was breaking over the city.
Ten minutes later a negotiated
settlement allowed the hard-core remnants of the democracy movement—some 5,000 students
and their supporters—to leave by the southeastern corner of the square. As they
left singing the Internationale, troops ritually beat them with wooden clubs
and rods.
The army had been ordered to clear the Square
by 6 a.m and it had done so, but at a terrible cost.
As daylight broke over the Avenue of
Eternal Peace dazed knots of Chinese, many of them weeping and all of them
angry at their government, stood at intersections, reliving the events of a few
hours before when tracer bullets and flares turned the black Beijing sky into a
deadly torrent of crimson.
Along the roadside leading into the
square lay several wounded, some perhaps already dead.
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| Bodies of dead demonstrators removed from the Square |
“They murdered the people. . . .
They just shot the people down like dogs, with no warning,” said a man whose
shirt was soaked with blood. “I carried a woman to an ambulance, but I think
she was dead.”
“Please,” he said, “you must tell
the world what has happened here. We need your protection from our government.”
Perhaps the defining moment of the
massacre came a bit later that morning when a student jumped in front of a
column of tanks on Chang’an Avenue and refused to move. This student, as yet
still unidentified, shouted at the tank commander: "Get out of my city. …
You're not wanted here." Each time the tank would attempt to maneuver
around the student, he would jump in front of it. The column of tanks turned
off their motors and then several other students ran out and pulled the student
to safety. To this day nobody is sure who the student was or what happened to
him. Most Chinese still refer to him as the “tank man.”
I walked back to where I had left my
bicycle and rode to the Jianguo Hotel. As I peddled along mostly deserted streets
I tried to make sense out what I had seen. With the students already dispersing
from the square or planning to, the attack by the army was unnecessarily
brutal.
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| This is what I saw as I rode my bike back to my hotel |
There was little doubt that what I
had witnessed was an assault designed to punish the demonstrators for
embarrassing China’s leadership—Premiere Li Peng and Deng Xiaoping,
the ailing leader of China’s Communist Party.
China's hard-line rulers, clearly in
control after the bloodbath, issued a statement that morning that said:
“Thugs frenziedly attacked People's
Liberation Army troops, seizing weapons, erecting barricades and beating
soldiers and officers in an attempt to overthrow the government of the People's
Republic of China and socialism.”
China’s leaders have not forgotten
the pro-democracy demonstrations of 1989. Unnerved by recent turbulence among
Tibetans and always nervous about the possibility of human rights protests in the
heart of the capital, China barred live television coverage from Tiananmen Square
during the 2008 Beijing Olympics—just as it had in 1989.
It remains to be seen whether or not government censorship has exorcised the ghosts of June 4, 1989 that still hang over Tiananmen
Square. But there is little doubt that time has not healed the deep wounds
inflicted on China’s people that terrible night 24 years ago.
