At least 10,000 people died in Tiananmen Square massacre

New details have emerged about the Tiananmen Square massacre from contemporary British diplomatic cables obtained by the Hong Kong News Website HK01. The cables are correspondence from Sir Alan Donald, British ambassador to China, and describe the immediate aftermath of the Government breakup of the protests on the square. All of the documents below have been officially released by the UK government under the Public Archives Act and Freedom of Information Act of the UK so no need to RA for wikileaks government-gonna-shut-us-down type concerns.

For context "27 Army" is the 27th PLA Army Group, mostly made up of peasants from rural areas of far Northern China - they were called in after widespread insubordination by other PLA units.

quote:

---

The 27 Army APCs [armoured personnel carriers] opened fire on the crowd before running over them. APCs ran over troops and civilians at 65kph [40 miles per hour].”

---

quote:

---

Students understood they were given one hour to leave square, but after five minutes APCs attacked.
Students linked arms but were mown down. APCs then ran over the bodies time and time again to make, quote ‘pie’ unquote, and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains

---

quote:

---

27 Army troops had used dum-dum bullets and snipers shot many civilians on balconies, street sweepers etc for target practice.

27 Army ordered to spare no one. Wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted.

A three-year-old girl was injured, but her mother was shot as she went to her aid, as were six others.”


1,000 survivors were told they could escape but were then mown down by specially prepared MG [machine gun] positions.

Army ambulances who attempted to give aid were shot up, as was a Sino-Japanese hospital ambulance. With medical crew dead, wounded driver attempted to ram attackers but was blown to pieces by anti-tank weapon.

27 Army officer shot dead by own troops, apparently because he faltered. Troops explained they would be shot if they hadn’t shot the officer.

Minimum estimate of civilian dead 10,000.

---

These revelations follow reports from June that the Chinese Government planned the massacre for nearly two weeks beforehand. LINK

quote:

---

On May 20, 1989.... Sir Alan Ewen Donald, Britain’s ambassador to China, sent Downing Street a telegram about his lunch with American sinologist Stuart Schram. “Professor Stuart Schram confided to me that one of his Chinese contacts had told him that in recent days Deng Xiaoping commented that ‘two hundred dead could bring 20 years of peace to China’,” Donald wrote. “The implication clearly was that the sacrifice of a number of demonstrators lives now would stabilize the present situation and buy the time needed to complete the reform of China.”

---

Most of the recent information we're getting is coming from the Margaret Thatcher foundation which is releasing many documents that can be found

HERE. Most of it is from Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service but there's some State Department docs in there as well.





So yea, horrible shite from where all of our stuff is made. Merry Christmas y'all.