In a brutal and horrific show of force, the Chinese Government vented its fury and frustration on student dissidents and their supporters on 4 June 1989.
Up to 2,600 people are thought to have been killed and 10,000 injured when the People’s Liberation Army appeared in the streets of Beijing, advancing on Tiananmen Square, firing indiscriminately on demonstrators.
Thousands pleaded with soldiers to “Go home, go home” only to face a fusillade of bullets. The students retaliated, pulling the crew from a troop carrier and beating them senseless before setting the vehicle alight.
Screams of agony rang out as hundreds of injured were carried through the streets by frantic riders to hospitals, many of which were filled to overflowing with dead, dying and wounded.
After 1.00 am the troops lined up for their final assault on the great square in which, until a few hours earlier, a near-carnival atmosphere had reigned. Marching forward towards the students they fired at will, climbing over bodies and still shooting. Then came the tanks which had no difficulty in flattening the students tents or their occupants. It was all over.
World leaders were quick to condemn the massacre. In Moscow, the Soviet news agency Tass gave few details of what had happened.
Related Posts
Assassination of JFK (1963) President Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963 - shot in the head as he was driven through Dallas, Texas, in an…
Black Power 1966 was, in all respects, a crucial turning point for the black movement in America. In that year the Black Panther party was…
Bay of Pigs Fidel Castro overthrew the US-backed Batista dictatorship in January 1959 to take control of Cuba, and in 1960 he took over…
Cuban Missile Crisis In 1959 a revolution took place in Cuba and Fidel Castro came to power. He introduced a Soviet-style government on…
Fall of Saigon (1975) The war in Vietnam ended abruptly on 30 April 1975. Saigon surrendered almost without a struggle as North Vietnamese tanks…
Graeme Thorne Kidnapping (1960) Sydney (Australia) father Basil Thorne and his wife Freda won £100,000 in one of the first Opera House lotteries on…
Berlin Wall In 1945, at the end of WWII, Germany was divided into a Soviet Zone in the East, and British, French…
Test Tube Babies The world’s first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, weighing five pounds twelve ounces, was delivered by a Caesarean operation at Oldham…
