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And the other is an image of some tanks
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
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There's a huge difference between "the CPC ran over 10,000 innocent schoolchildren in Tian'anmen square with tanks" and "riots around Beijing resulted in firebombings of PLA vehicles and lynchings of PLA officers, who then responded with force, resulting in a few hundred deaths in total."
Here's a pretty good overview. Two days prior to June 4th, unarmed officers were lynched and firebombed in their vehicles. That's why the PLA was sent in to begin with, which then cascaded into rioters blocking the PLA's advance and escalations into killings on both sides. It wasn't an "even fight," it was the PLA vs. rioters, but even still it was the rioters that struck first, hard.
That's a pretty blatant misrepresentation of what happened though. This makes it sound like the rioters started the violence on June 2nd forcing a government response, but that's not the case. The CCP had already declared martial law on May 20th and had mobilised 30 divisions. The PLA was first sent in at that time, but because the protestors blocked them they couldn't advance into the city and were ordered to wait on the 24th.
On the 1st of June, two individual reports (the Li Peng report and the MMS report) were published within the Politburo, decrying US influences and advocating direct military action. The CCP decided that day that military action would be used against the protestors.
June 2nd saw an incident with a PAP jeep that inflamed tensions. But I can't personally find a source claiming firebombings and lynchings at this time. The jeep incident was the trigger that made the students believe military action was at hand though. Only on June 3rd did tensions escalate further, when the PLA advanced into the city and clashed with protestors trying to repel them. This is when I can first find the protestors using molotov cocktails and trying to beat soldiers to death, but at the same time the PLA had opened fire with live, expanding ammunition on the protestors (so they certainly weren't 'unarmed'). From there it only escalated further of course. So the protestors were fighting in response to the PLA advancing into the city to break up the protest, not the other way around.
Martial Law is not the same as actual killings, moreover the Liberation News article is well-sourced. As for the killed soldiers, there are pictures of them (NSFL) if you really want to see proof.
Martial law is what mobilized the army, which you falsely claimed happened after protestors started killing unarmed PLA soldiers. I didn't equivocate it to killings.
And of those killed soldiers, here's what your own source says: https://xcancel.com/SebasdePeru/status/1533603901508820994#m
Killed for having murdered four protestors. Not so "unarmed" either then. Additionally, those pictures are from June 3rd/4th, which again is after the PLA was ordered to move in and when they started killing protestors if they refused to clear out. Obviously the protestors will attempt to defend themselves against such aggression.
Martial law was declared, and then rioters started killing unarmed PLA officers. This is what prompted the PLA's response, the violent clashes started after martial law was declared, and rioters started killing officers. Secondly, the source says much of this happened on June 2nd, which backs up the Liberation School article and its sources. Thirdly, the idea that the officer had already murdered 4 people came from the people who killed him, not an outside verified source. In an event where we already know much has been mythologized, this single officer may or may not have been guilty, but was far from the only murdered officer.
Ok so first off, this "source" is a random X account with little credibility, that already admitted in the thread that several images aren't verified and that much is unknown. I have no idea where they pulled the dates from for example; when looking up these images I can find some other sources for the images for the 3rd and 4th of June, but not for the one supposedly for the 2nd. Meanwhile I can't find any other sources claiming these "numerous violent clashes" on the 2nd. In fact, most sources claim that only on the 2nd did the protestors come to suspect that the PLA would move in violently, but only did so on the 3rd (prompting retaliation). I can't find a clear source claiming the violence happened between the 20th and the 24th; only that protestors blocked the PLA from entering the city proper (which didn't seem to be paired with much violence since the PLA wasn't ordered to shoot either).
On the 1st of June (so even before any hypothetical lynchings on the 2nd) did the CCP decide to use violence to clear the protests.
You also keep talking about these supposedly unarmed PLA soldiers. You do realize how that makes no sense, right? The PLA is actively mobilised to enforce martial law, and they're supposed to do so by singing songs or something? Of course they were armed. It's also the primary source for how the protestors got their weapons; taken from PLA soldiers.
I referenced the liberation news article, and linked the images as a different matter. You were the one that started using it for claims beyond that, and now that the specifics behind the images are in question, you're deciding to walk that back. You can feel free to check the article and the sources it lists, like I already sent, rather than fixating on a twitter account I referenced for the images.
Well that's just it isn't it? The claim that on June 2nd unarmed PLA officers were on the square and were attacked there is also unsourced in that Liberation News article. It's just mentioned but there's no footnote present that supports the claim.
And it's hard to make that make sense. By all accounts, the protestors blocked all access to the square. They did so in the period of the 20th to the 24th (first attempt) and also tried to once the PLA was ordered to use violence when they moved in on the 3rd. So how exactly did this unarmed column of PLA soldiers manage to get there again?
And of course we know that the PLA was armed at that point since the protestors took their weapons (which we have tons of photographs of).
You seem to have quite uncritically bought into the CCP narrative of the events, even if the story presented doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Eyewitness accounts also dispute the CCP version. To be clear, they don't dispute that the square itself was cleared (mostly) peacefully, but the events leading up to it and directly after certainly weren't. And the images of that are quite gruesome, with PLA soldiers firing down streets and using expanding ammunition.
Historians don't buy the western narrative that claimed tens of thousands died of course, that was horseshit. But the CCP narrative is heavily disputed too. The death toll likely is somewhere between 500 and 2600, based on eyewitness accounts and imagery of the events.
And just to be clear: these protests weren't universally pro-US. The protestors were highly factionalised, some seeking better relations with the US, but nowhere near all of them did. This factionalism also made it harder to negotiate with them for the CCP, since there wasn't a clear leader.
(Btw I have no idea what you're referring to when you said I "walked things back", as far as I can tell I did no such thing).
I'm aware that the protests had wildly different requests, from hardliners opposing Reform and Opening Up to the "Pro-Democracy" student-led movement. The student-led movement had CIA connections at the leadership level, and by the time of June 4th the "Pro-Democracy" movement was all that was really left.
There wasn't an "unarmed column of PLA soldiers," you're confusing the events of June 3rd with June 2nd. June 3rd saw clashes between rioters, who had taken PLA arms and were fighting, while reports are admittedly mixed on whether or not rioters murdered the PLA officers on the morning of the 3rd alone, or in addition to June 2nd. Either way, the rioters did jump unarmed soldiers who were not deployed as a part of the main force moving in, even wikipedia backs this up.
The CPC narrative has not been credibly countered. Eyewitness accounts do not point to hundreds of extra deaths in concrete terms, they just point towards that being a possibility. As for you walking a point back, I mean when you went in and saw the twitter account saying that the lynched PLA officer had murdered 4 people, which the twitter account stated came from the ones lynching him. I pointed that bit out and then you seemed to have walked it back.
The only thing that Wikipedia mentions in regards to violence on June 2nd is this paragraph:
Regarding the unarmed soldiers, that was an intercepted bus that was moving soldiers in who had been ordered to take up arms and disperse the protests. There were beatings but Wikipedia does not mention any deaths here.
Perhaps that was a simple misunderstanding then. You brought up the thread in order to reinforce your claim that the protestors were killing unarmed soldiers (at least how I understood it). Yet the only claim the account made is that the soldier supposedly killed 4 people, so the killing was retaliatory. It does list "the murderers" as the source, but we don't have a better one (at least not one provided there). I mostly pointed it out since that account doesn't come across as very reliable or informed, they posted a couple pictures to set a narrative, but when questioned seemed to walk back the claims they made.
As far as the death toll, best estimate we have comes from Beijing hospital records:
This is quite significantly more than what the CCP has claimed (and quite atrocious in and of itself, even if it's less than the bogus 10k figure).
I wasn't referring to Wikipedia backing up the June 2nd bit. I don't 100% disagree or agree with the rest, but I don't think there's much to argue definitively anymore due to the nature of how hazy the estimates are.