/'_/\ /'_/| | \ `\ | | | ______ | `\ `\ | | | ______ /'______/\ | |\ `\ `| | | /______/\ | ___ \/| | | |\ `\| | | | ___ \ \ | /'/ \_|/ | | | `\ | | | | | \ \/| | | | __ |_|/' `\__|/' | | | | | | | | \__/_/| | | |__| | | | \/___| |/ China News Digest | |/__/ |/ \_______/(InfoBase June 4 Collection)|_______/ May 1, 1993 **The CND InfoBase Project collects, among other China-related information, materials and/or bibliographical reference to matericals about the Beijing Massacre on June 4, 1989. Please refer to the trailer for more information. No. Subject june4-89.03t # of Lines --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. HEADLINE: Chinese students massacred, tears and blood fill streets ...84 2. HEADLINE: Chinese students massacred Hundreds feared slain by military ............................................................158 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. HEADLINE: Chinese students massacred, tears and blood fill streets ...84 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, June 4, 1989, Sunday, FINAL EDITION BYLINE: By Ronald E. Yates, Chicago Tribune DATELINE: BEIJING KEYWORDS: CHINA; RIGHTS; PROTEST; GOVERNMENT; MILITARY; SHOOTING; DEATH As dawn broke over China's capital Sunday, the Avenue of Eternal Peace had become a street of tears. 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 thousands of troops opened fire on unarmed civilians with red tracer bullets and flares that turned the black Beijing sky into a deadly torrent of crimson. It was a night like none other in Beijing's recent history. Along the roadside lay several wounded, some perhaps already dead. "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." Another man, his head wrapped in a bandage made from someone's undershirt, sat against a light pole and railed against China's leaders for employing deadly force in retaking Tiananmen Square. "Li Peng has become China's Hitler," he said of the country's premier. "He and all the others must be punished by the people for what they have done." As he spoke, a steady stream of bicyclists silently flowed past, heading toward the square that had been occupied since May 13 by pro-democracy student demonstrators. Few reached their destination. Troops and armored personnel carriers had sealed off the square. Anyone who got within range of the troops came under fire. An army helicopter roared overhead, sending hundreds of people scurrying for cover under trees. "You see, this is how your government loves you," said a woman huddling under a tree along the roadway with her 8-year-old son. Less than two hours earlier, the tree under which she stood had been a shelter of sorts for one of dozens of three-wheeled carts whose flatbeds were used to ferry the wounded to safety. A crimson stain still blotted the grass at its base. The thump of tear gas canisters being fired, the crack of automatic rifle fire and the wail of ambulance sirens had turned the Beijing night into a night of terror. At one point, as a reporter and an American businessman hunkered behind a disabled bus, troops began firing over the heads of several demonstrators who ran behind the vehicle for cover. "They are all bastards," said one worker, his chest heaving. "Every death must be avenged by the people." Moments later several rounds of rifle fire peppered the treetops, sending branches and leaves cascading to the ground. "Let's get out of here!" said the businessman. "I think they mean to kill everybody." Abandoning the sanctity of the bus, the group jogged back down the Avenue of Eternal Peace and took refuge behind a bridge abutment. As the sun broke over the city, sporadic firing still could be heard, but it was obvious the square and the streets around it were under government control for the first time in seven weeks. "Our people are in shock,," said one woman, tears flowing down her cheeks. "Our nation has become a hell." GRAPHIC: PHOTO: AP Laserphoto. Broken bicycles and damaged trucks outside Tiananmen Square on Sunday morning attest to the violence of overnight clashes. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. HEADLINE: Chinese students massacred Hundreds feared slain by military .....................................................................158 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- BYLINE: By Uli Schmetzer, Chicago Tribune SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, June 4, 1989, Sunday, FINAL EDITION DATELINE: BEIJING KEYWORDS: CHINA; RIGHTS; PROTEST; MILITARY; SHOOTING; DEATH; MULTIPLE; REACTION; FIRST; STATISTIC; GOVERNMENT Army troops aboard tanks and armored personnel carriers smashed their way into Tiananmen Square Sunday morning, turning machine gun and rifle fire on crowds of daredevil youths trying to block their way. As gun volleys echoed around the capital, the crowds turned over trucks and buses and set them aflame in a vain, blood- spattered attempt to stop thousands of other soldiers marching down main avenues towards the square. By late Sunday morning, the square - the scene of dramatic pro-democracy protests for more than two weeks - was surrounded by a phalanx of troops four and five ranks deep. Estimates of the dead and wounded varied wildly but ran into many hundreds. One doctor estimated more than 500 dead. Hospitals couldn't keep up with the broken bodies being trundled in, and even the state-run radio and television said more than 1,000 soldiers had been wounded. The wounded and the dead were carted from the inferno on the flatbeds of three-wheeled vehicles through a pall of smoke. The stinging stench of tear gas hovered over the embattled city and shrouded the fate of the 10,000 students and their supporters who had been holding out on the square. "Tell the world!" they screamed. "Tell the United States! Tell the truth! We were students! We were common people - unarmed, and they are killing us!" Their fate is unknown. It was a night to remember, a night of savagery. At two o'clock in the morning, 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 down 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 crowds clambering all over it, a tank raced through the crowd. It sidewiped 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 milling crowds blocking their access to the square. Scores of people were wounded. Some of the bodies were laid out on the side of the road as the troops moved on to take the square, which has been the symbol of China's democratic movement for the last seven weeks. One tank ran into the back of another one that had stalled on the Jianguomenwai overpass. As they hurriedly bounced apart, the machine guns on their turrets began to train on the approaching crowd of about 10,000. The crowd, in a do-or-die mood, tried to board them but the tanks rumbled on. Then troops leapt off a convoy of trucks in their wake and fired volleys of tear gas and bullets as the crowd took cover in bushes or climbed over a spiked fence into a compound for foreigners, where trembling students and young workers hid in corridors and the elevator. As dawn came up on Sunday morning, this reporter was swept toward the square by a crowd of 3,000 howling youths trying to break through the line of soldiers with bare hands and wheeling their bicycles. "Fascists! Murderers!" the crowd chanted as they exchanged horror stories about how their comrades on the square had been massacred by the troops. 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. Most of the bullets went overhead but screams of pain indicated some had found their mark. The protesters threw themselves and their bikes on to the pavement of the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Dragging their bikes behind them, they crawled like ants 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 towards the square. Then the volleys rang out again, more intense this time. Two lines of soldiers began to chase after the mob, alternately firing tear gas and bullets. A young girl screamed and fell. She was snatched up and draped over the handlebars of a bike. One youth clutching his face was dragged away by his comrades bleeding heavily. A young woman photographer cried out, "It's awful! "They're killing people everywhere! I can't take any more photos of this." 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. Two sturdy middle-aged men shouting to clear the way pedaled through a corridor left by the crowd toward the nearest hospital. Two lifeless bodies were sprawled across their tricycles." Three other bodies were laid out on the pavement of a side street waiting for transport. A crowd gathered around them, waving fists and cursing the government. A tall young man in a white shirt and incongruously waring a white silk glove hurled a brick through the windshield of an empty bus that had been used as a barricade before a tank pushed it off the road. Withnin seconds, the crowd, shouting "Police agent, police agent" chased him down the road, cornered him, and savagely beat him as he fell. They stomped on his body. The grisly scene was soon concealed by a milling mob of people worried that the incident would be used to justify brutal army intervention. At one intersection, smoke poured from two burning buses. An overturned army truck was in flames a short distance away. Two more buses that had been hauled across the road as a last barrier were tossed aside almost like discarded toys, smashed by a tank that had barged though them. Broken glass and broken bricks, the only weapons available to the crowds, littered the pavement. Lane dividers ripped out during the battle lay across the road like broken fences. Only bicycles, slaloming their way thorugh this debris, could pass. As the savage night ended and the sun came up, an indignant crowd - growing by the minute - regrouped and poured forth again to harrass the tens of thousands of soldiers by now in place at vital intersections. It wasn't long before countless enraged thousands took to the streets again and confronted the steel-helmeted soldiers, who stood stonily with AK-47 assault rifles cradled across their chests. "How many people did you kill? " they shouted. "You have betrayed the people!" others cried. ""You are not the people's army anymore." The soldiers hung their heads or stolidly stared into space, biting their lips. Angry young people with balled fists ran toward me shouting: "We are not giving up! The Chinese people are not afraid. We will teach this government a lesson." GRAPHIC: PHOTO (color): Agence France-Presse photo. Chinese student demonstrators set an army tank on fire while troops attack crowds in Tiananmen Square. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Executive Editor: Bing Wen in Ottawa, Canada | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | China News Digest (CND) InfoBase covers the following areas: | | History : WWII, Cultural Revolution, June 4, Olympics | | Service : visa/PR, PRC-doc, tax, insurance, travel/living | | Academics : job, conference/workshop, societies, projects | | Other : org intro, book review, community activities | | ------ * ------ * ------ | | To contribute, please send to CND-IB@CND.ORG | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+