New Weekly Quest: The June 4th Event
This week we present the June 4th Event. On this day, three important event were on the same day:
June 4, 1939 – Holocaust: The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, United States, after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.
June 4, 1970 – Tonga gains independence from the United Kingdom.
June 4, 1989 – The Tiananmen Square protests are violently ended in Beijing by the People’s Liberation Army.
June 4, 1939 – Holocaust: The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida
On June 4, 1939, Captain Schröder believed he was being prevented from trying to land St. Louis on the Florida shore. Material from that time was conflicting. According to authors Rabbi Ted Falcon, Ph.D & David Blatner in Judaism for Dummies, when the “St Louis was turned away from Cuba…, America not only refused their entry but even fired a warning shot to keep them away from Florida’s shores”. Legally the refugees could not enter on tourist visas, as they had no return addresses, and the U.S. had enacted immigration quotas in 1924. Telephone records show discussion of the situation by Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, members of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s cabinet, who tried to persuade Cuba to accept the refugees. Their actions, together with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, were not successful. The Coast Guard was not ordered to turn away the refugees, but the US did not make provision for their entry. As St. Louis was turned away from the United States, a group of academics and clergy in Canada attempted to persuade Canada’s Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to provide sanctuary to the ship, which was only two days from Halifax, Nova Scotia. However Canadian immigration officials and cabinet ministers hostile to Jewish immigration persuaded the Prime Minister not to intervene on June 9. Captain Gustav Schröder, the commander of the ship, was a non-Jewish German and an anti-Nazi who went to great lengths to ensure dignified treatment for his passengers. He arranged for Jewish religious services and commanded his crew to treat the refugee passengers as they would any other customers on the cruise line. As the situation of the vessel deteriorated, he personally negotiated and schemed to find them a safe haven (for instance, at one point he formulated plans to wreck the ship on the British coast to force the passengers to be taken as refugees). He refused to return the ship to Germany until all the passengers had been given entry to some other country.
US officials worked with Britain and European nations to find refuge for the travelers in Europe. The ship returned to Europe, docking at Antwerp, Belgium, on 17 June 1939. The United Kingdom agreed to take 288 of the passengers, who disembarked and traveled to the UK by other steamers. After much negotiation by Schröder, the remaining 619 passengers were allowed to disembark at Antwerp; 224 were accepted by France, 214 by Belgium, and 181 by the Netherlands. They appeared to be safe from Hitler’s persecution. The following year, after the German invasions of Belgium and France in May 1940, the Jews were at renewed risk. Without its passengers, the ship returned to Hamburg and survived the war. St. Louis Captain Gustav Schröder negotiates landing permits for the passengers with Belgian officials in the Port of Antwerp. By using the survival rates for Jews in various countries, Thomas and Morgan-Witts, the authors of Voyage of the Damned, estimated that 180 of the St. Louis refugees in France, 152 of those in Belgium, and 60 of those in the Netherlands, survived the Holocaust. Adding to these the passengers who disembarked in England, of the original 936 refugees (one man died during the voyage), roughly 709 survived and 227 were slain. Later research by Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gave a more precise, higher total of 254 deaths:
“Of the 620 St. Louis passengers who returned to continental Europe, we determined that eighty-seven were able to emigrate before Germany invaded western Europe on May 10, 1940. Two hundred fifty-four passengers in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands after that date died during the Holocaust. Most of these people were murdered in the killing centers of Auschwitz and Sobibór; the rest died in internment camps, in hiding or attempting to evade the Nazis. Three hundred sixty-five of the 620 passengers who returned to continental Europe survived the war.”
June 4, 1970 – Tonga gains independence from the United Kingdom.
Tonga (pronounced /ˈtɒŋɡə/, Tongan [ˈtoŋa]), officially the Kingdom of Tonga (Tongan: Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, comprising 176 islands scattered over 700,000 square kilometres (270,000 sq mi) of ocean in the South Pacific. Fifty-two of the islands are inhabited. In 1845 the ambitious young warrior, strategist, and orator Taufa?ahau united Tonga into a kingdom. He held the chiefly title of Tu?i Kanokupolu, but had been baptised[by whom?] with the name Jiaoji (“George”) in 1831. In 1875, with the help of missionary Shirley Waldemar Baker, he declared Tonga a constitutional monarchy, formally adopted the western royal style, emancipated the “serfs”, enshrined a code of law, land tenure, and freedom of the press, and limited the power of the chiefs.
Tonga became a British-protected state under a Treaty of Friendship on 18 May 1900, when European settlers and rival Tongan chiefs tried to oust the second king. Within the British Empire, which posted no higher permanent representative on Tonga than a British Consul (1901–1970), Tonga formed part of the British Western Pacific Territories (under a colonial High Commissioner, residing on Fiji) from 1901 until 1952. Although under the protection of Britain, Tonga remained the only Pacific nation never to have given up its monarchical government – as did Tahiti and Hawai?i. The Tongan monarchy, unlike that of the UK, follows an uninterrupted succession of hereditary rulers from one family. In 1918 the influenza epidemic that spread through the world caused the deaths of 1,800 people in Tonga, approximately 8% of the population.
The Treaty of Friendship and Tonga’s protectorate status ended in 1970 under arrangements established by Queen Salote Tupou III prior to her death in 1965. Tonga joined the Commonwealth of Nations in 1970 (atypically as an autochthonous monarchy, that is one with its own local monarch rather than that of the United Kingdom – compare Malaysia, Lesotho, and Swaziland), and became a member of the United Nations in September 1999. While exposed to colonial pressures, Tonga has never lost indigenous governance, a fact that makes Tonga unique in the Pacific and gives Tongans much pride, as well as confidence in their monarchical system. As part of cost cutting measures across the British Foreign Service, the British Government closed the British High Commission in Nuku?alofa in March 2006, transferring representation of British interests in Tonga to the UK High Commissioner in Fiji. The last resident British High Commissioner was Paul Nessling
June 4, 1989 – The Tiananmen Square protests are violently ended in Beijing by the People’s Liberation Army.
In the Chinese language, the incident is most commonly known as the “六四事件” (pinyin: Liù-Sì Shìjiàn; literally “Six Four Incident”, commonly translated to the “June Fourth Incident”). Sometimes people call it “六四运动” (pinyin: Liù-Sì Yùndòng; literally “Six Four Movement”, commonly “June Fourth Movement”). Colloquially, a simply “六四” (pinyin: Liù-Sì; literally “Six Four”, commonly “June Fourth”) is used. The nomenclature of the former is consistent with the customary names of the other two great protest actions that occurred in Tiananmen Square: the May Fourth Movement of 1919, and the April Fifth Movement of 1976. ’4 June’ refers to the day on which the People’s Liberation Army cleared Tiananmen Square of protesters, although the order to proceed into Tiananmen as well as its actual operation began on the evening of 3 June. Other names which have been used in the Chinese language include “六四屠杀” (pinyin: Liù-Sì Túshā, June Fourth Massacre) and “六四镇压” (pinyin: Liù-Sì Zhènyā, June Fourth Crackdown). The government of the People’s Republic of China has referred to the event as the “1989年春夏之交的政治风波”[9][dead link] (Political Turmoil between Spring and Summer of 1989). Other names, such as the “八九民运” (traditional Chinese: 八九民運; pinyin: Bā-Jiǔ Mínyùn, 89 Pro-democracy Movement) are also used to describe the event broadly in its entirety. Alternative names such as May 35th, VIIV(Roman number for 6 and 4) and “八平方” (Eight Squared) are used on the internet in Mainland China to bypass internet censorship. In English, the terms Tiananmen Square Massacre or Tiananmen Square Crackdown are often used to describe 4 June events on most media sources. In East Germany the events in Beijing were known as the “Chinese Solution” (Chinesische Lösung). The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the Tiananmen Square massacre and the June Fourth Incident (in part to avoid confusion with two prior Tiananmen Square protests), were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) beginning on 15 April 1989. The movement used mainly non-violent methods and can be considered a case of civil resistance. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in the year that was to see the collapse of a number of communist governments in eastern Europe.
The protests were sparked by mass mourning over the death of former CPC General Secretary Hu Yaobang, a Party official who had been purged for his support of political liberalization. By the eve of Hu’s funeral, 100,000 people gathered at Tiananmen Square. Beijing students began the demonstrations to encourage continued economic reform and liberalization, and evolved into a mass movement for political reform. From Tiananmen Square they later expanded to the surrounding streets. Non-violent protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai and Wuhan. Looting and rioting occurred in various locations throughout China, including Xi’an and Changsha. The movement lasted seven weeks after Hu’s death on 15 April. Premier Li Peng, a hardline conservative, declared martial law on May 20, but no military action took place until June 4, when the tanks and troops of the People’s Liberation Army moved into the streets of Beijing, using live fire while proceeding to Tiananmen Square to clear the area of protestors. The exact number of civilian deaths is not known, and the majority of estimates range from several hundred to thousands. There was widespread international condemnation of the government’s use of force against the protesters.
Following June 4, the government conducted widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press. The Communist Party initiated a large-scale campaign to purge officials deemed sympathetic to the protests. Several senior officials, most notably Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, were placed under house arrest. At the Third Plenum of the Eleventh National Congress of the Communist Party in 1978, the Communist Party of China (CPC) initiated a series of economic and political reforms, which led to the gradual implementation of a market economy and some political liberalization that relaxed the system set up by Mao Zedong. The Chinese economic reforms were led by Zhao Ziyang, the Party’s General Secretary, and they were generally successful in the early years, particularly in the rural regions. However, since political reforms were neglected, corruption and nepotism pervaded the shift toward a free-market economy. The dual-track system, which was “the most characteristic feature of China’s initial departure from the planned economy” created the “coexistence of two coordination mechanisms (state and market).”
The state-mandated pricing system, in place since the 1950s, had long kept prices stable at low levels that had, it is argued, reduced incentives. The partial reforms created a two-tier system where some prices were forced to be at low levels while others were allowed to fluctuate. In a market with chronic shortages, this allowed people with powerful connections to buy goods at low prices and sell at market prices. Also, money supply had expanded too fast. At least a third of factories were unprofitable, depending on loans and subsidies. The government tightened money supply in 1988, leaving much of the economy without loans. Following the 1988 Beidaihe meeting, word leaked that Zhao Ziyang would listen to those members of the CPC, including Deng Xiaoping, who were urging chuangjiageguan (to get the price right in one shot) by deciding to “establish a market-regulated price system in China within five years.” Economists recommended faster reforms, for example, renowned economist Milton Friedman gave a speech and met officials in China, recommending them to free the rest of the economy, asserting that a market economy would benefit people and it should be made free from corruption, bribes, special influence, and political mechanisms. Leaked news that there would be a relaxing of controls triggered waves of panic cash withdrawals, buying and hoarding all over China. Some even bought rooms full of matches. The decision to rescind the price reforms occurred in less than two weeks, “but its impact continued to reverberate for a long time…[and] s a consequence, inflation soared.” In the late 1980s, inflation was the most pronounced issue facing the Chinese economy, which was at 7.3% in 1987, but jumped to 18.5% in 1988. Compounding this was the loss of job security (the iron rice bowl), which led to a “crisis of layoffs and unemployment.”
Intellectuals and students were especially disaffected by the reform process, as they were originally envisioned to play a leading role in the “springtime of the sciences.” Due to the initial stress on educated people to guide development, the number of universities expanded (400 universities in 1977 to 1,975 in 1988), as did student enrollment (625,319 in 1977 to 2,065,923 in 1988). However, the Four Modernizations were “gradually dropped”, as central planning gave way to a market-economy development strategy being adopted. The reform process would now emphasize the role of the market, agriculture, light industry, the service sector, private initiatives, and foreign investment. This shift in orientation was not received well by the burgeoning student population, who found it difficult to find job placements as “the recently prospering industrial sectors, that, is rural collective industries and private businesses, did not really need and could not attract university graduates.” Undergraduate students in the social sciences and the humanities, 18.3% of all Beijing undergraduates in 1988, were especially hard hit because their training did not give them an advantage in the new market economy. This problem, growing since the mid-1980s, was exacerbated by a reform to the job assignment system in 1988, creating the two-way selection system. This allowed private companies to veto the job placements, instead of accepting students the universities matched them with. The two-way system is referred to by Dingxin Zhao as the “backdoor selection” system, because it was pervaded by nepotism and favoritism, as “employers only took students who had acquaintances in their unit regardless of the students’ academic performance.” Popular slogans espoused by intellectuals and students during the mid-1980 included, “those who hold scalpels earn less than those who hold eel knives” and, “those who produce missiles earn less than those who sell tea eggs.” Facing a dismal job market, due to the economic reforms, and limited chances of going abroad after the mid-1980s, Chinese intellectuals and students had a greater vested interest in Chinese domestic political issues. Small-scale study groups began appearing on Beijing university campuses, the most famous being Wang Dan’s Democracy Salon and Liu Gang’s Caodi Salon (the salon on the lawn). These were attended by students, members of the intellectual elite; even the American ambassador and his wife participated in one meeting. Discussions covered a wide range of issues about politics, which “trained many student activists” who were the “major organizational base for the coming student movement.” The “worsening economic situation of intellectuals and students, and of the country as a whole” led to “student protests repeatedly breaking out in universities after 1986” (see 1986-1987 Student Protests, and April–June 1988 protests).
Wang Hui, a professor in Beijing, says that, “these changes (the economic reforms) were the catalyst for the 1989 social mobilization.” Wu Xiuquan, member of the Standing Committee of the Central Advisory Commission, echoed this sentiment at the Secretariat of the Fourth Plenum of the Thirteenth CCP Central Committee on 19 June 1989, two weeks after the repression of the protest, when he said, “China has its own unique national situation and patterns of development; copying others mechanically will lead us straight to disaster. What’s more, economics and politics go by different rules. Why did Zhao’s shock-therapy price reforms fail last year? Because they were too much; the people panicked.” Barry Naughton states that “economic causes were an important part of the social crisis leading up to the Tiananmen debacle” and he asserts that the reforms during the 1980s were overwhelmingly successful. The social crisis leading up to the Tiananmen Square protests were created by deteriorating cyclical economic conditions. Naughton is in agreement with the “reform without losers” view of China’s economic reforms, and only because anti-reform elements in the Party failed to roll back the reforms and market forces were allowed to correct the economy, did urban inflation decrease.
In a general sense, students and intellectuals demanded economic liberalization, political democracy, media freedom, freedom of speech and association, rule of law, and to have the legitimacy of the movement recognized. More specific demands opposed official corruption and speculation, opposition to the ‘princely’ party (elites with special privileges), and called for price stability, social security, and the democratic means to supervise the reform process, and the reorganization of social benefits. Transitioning from a socialist ideology that espoused equality to a new market oriented ideology, the reforms, “Created a crisis of state legitimacy from two different directions: on the one hand, people could rely on the nature of state economic policy to criticize the legitimacy of the state ideology and its method of rule, while on the other they could use the ideology of socialism to take issue with the legitimacy of the new state economic policy.” Wang Hui encapsulates the protesters’ motivation by stating that, “Regardless of whether we are talking about students, intellectuals, or any others who participated in the movement in support of reform (political or economic) and demands for democracy, their hopes for and understanding of reform were extraordinarily diverse. When looked at from a broader or synthetic perspective, however, the reforms that the greater part of the populace hoped for and their ideals for democracy and rule by law were for the purposes of guaranteeing social justice and the democratization of economic life through the restructuring of politics and the legal system.”
Soldiers and tanks from the 27th and 38th Armies of the People’s Liberation Army were sent to take control of the city. The 27th Army was led by a commander related to Yang Shangkun. Intelligence reports also indicated that 27th and 28th units were brought in from outside provinces because the local PLA were considered to be sympathetic to the protest and to the people of the city. Reporters described elements of the 27th as having been most responsible for civilian deaths. After their attack on the square, the 27th reportedly established defensive positions in Beijing – not of the sort designed to counter a civilian uprising, but as if to defend against attacks by other military units. There were rumours at the time that high-ranking officials sympathised with the pro-democracy protesters and reports of defiance among other troops. According to the revised edition of Political Struggles in China’s Reform Era, Major General Xu Qinxian, commander of the 38th Army, shocked the top leadership when he refused a verbal order from General Li Laizhu to send the 38th in to clear the square; Xu had insisted on a written order. Xu was immediately removed from command and was later jailed for five years and expelled from the Communist Party.
As word spread that hundreds of thousands of troops were approaching from all four corners of the city, Beijingers flooded the streets to block them, as they had done two weeks earlier. People set up barricades at every major intersection. At about 10:30 pm, near the Muxidi apartment buildings (home to high-level Party officials and their families), protesters threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at police and army vehicles. As can be seen in numerous photographs many vehicles were set on fire in the streets all around Tiananmen some with their occupants still inside them. There were reports of soldiers being burned alive in their armoured personnel carriers while others were beaten to death. Then the soldiers started firing live ammunition at some of the protesters. Some people in nearby apartment blocks were hit. The battle raged in the streets surrounding the Square, with protesters repeatedly advancing toward the PLA and constructing barricades with vehicles, while the PLA attempted to clear the streets using tear gas, rifles, and tanks. Many injured citizens were saved by rickshaw drivers who ventured into the no-man’s-land between the soldiers and crowds and carried the wounded off to hospitals. After the attack on the square, live television coverage showed many people wearing black armbands in protest against the government, crowding various boulevards or congregating by burnt out and smoking barricades. In a couple of cases, soldiers were pulled from tanks, beaten and killed by protesters.
Meanwhile, the PLA systematically established checkpoints around the city, chasing after protesters and blocking off the university district. Earlier, within the Square itself, there had been a debate between those who wished to withdraw peacefully, including Han Dongfang, and those who wished to stand within the square, such as Chai Ling. At about 1:00 am, the army finally reached Tiananmen Square and waited for orders from the government. The soldiers had been told not to open fire, but they had also been told that they must clear the square by 6:00 am – with no exceptions or delays. They made a final offer of amnesty if the few thousand remaining students would leave. About 4:00 am, student leaders put the matter to a vote: Leave the square, or stay and face the consequences.
Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) rolled up the roads, firing ahead and off to the sides, perhaps killing or wounding their own soldiers in the process. BBC reporter Kate Adie spoke of “indiscriminate fire” within the square. Eyewitness reporter Charlie Cole also saw Chinese soldiers firing Type 56 assault rifles into the crowd near an APC which had just been torched and its crew killed; many were killed and wounded that night.
Students who sought refuge in buses were pulled out by groups of soldiers and beaten with heavy sticks. Even students attempting to leave the square were beset by soldiers and beaten. Leaders of the protest inside the square, where some had attempted to erect flimsy barricades ahead of the APCs, were said to have “implored” the students not to use weapons (such as Molotov cocktails) against the oncoming soldiers. Meanwhile, many students apparently were shouting, “Why are you killing us?” Around 4 or 5 am the following morning, 4 June, Cole reports to have seen tanks smashing into the square, crushing vehicles and people with their treads. By 5:40 am 4 June, the Square had been cleared. BBC 2 June 2009 James Miles, who was the BBC’s Beijing correspondent at the time, stated:
I and others conveyed the wrong impression. There was no massacre on Tiananmen Square… Protesters who were still in the square when the army reached it were allowed to leave after negotiations with martial law troops (Only a handful of journalists were on hand to witness this moment. There was no Tiananmen Square massacre, but there was a Beijing massacre.
Richard Roth of CBS reported that he and a colleague were on the south portico of the Great Hall of the People (which forms one of the borders of the Square) led by Richard Roth. In the words of eyewitness CBS news correspondent Richard Roth:
Derek Williams and I were driven in a pair of army jeeps right through the square, almost along its full length, and into the Forbidden City. Dawn was just breaking. There were hundreds of troops in the square … But we saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel—in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a “massacre” had recently occurred in that place… some have found it uncomfortable that all this conforms with what the Chinese government has always claimed, perhaps with a bit of sophistry: that there was no “massacre in Tiananmen Square.” But there’s no question many people were killed by the army that night around Tiananmen Square, and on the way to it — mostly in the western part of Beijing. Maybe, for some, comfort can be taken in the fact that the government denies that, too.
PBS reported that, on the morning of 5 June, protesters tried to enter the blockaded square but were shot at by the soldiers. The soldiers shot them in the back when they were running away. These actions were repeated several times. The suppression of the protest was immortalized in Western media by the famous video footage and photographs of a lone man in a white shirt standing in front of a column of tanks which were attempting to drive out of Tiananmen Square. Taken on 5 June as the column approached an intersection on the Chang’an Avenue, the footage depicted the unarmed man standing in the center of the street, halting the tanks’ progress. As the tank driver attempted to go around him, the “Tank Man” moved into the tank’s path. He continued to stand defiantly in front of the tanks for some time, then climbed up onto the turret of the lead tank to speak to the soldiers inside. After returning to his position in front of the tanks, the man was pulled aside by a group of people.
Eyewitnesses disagree about the identity of the group who pulled him aside. Jan Wong is convinced the group were concerned citizens helping him away, while Charlie Cole believes that “Tank Man” was probably executed after being taken from the tank by secret police, since the Chinese government could never produce him to hush the outcry from many countries. Time Magazine dubbed him The Unknown Rebel and later named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. British tabloid the Sunday Express reported that the man was 19-year-old student Wang Weilin; however, the validity of this claim is dubious.
What happened to the “Tank Man” following the demonstration is not known. In a speech to the President’s Club in 1999, Bruce Herschensohn—former deputy special assistant to President Richard Nixon—reported that he was executed 14 days later. In Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now, Jan Wong writes that the man is still alive and hiding in mainland China. In Forbidden City, Canadian children’s author William Bell, claims the man was named Wang Ai-min and was killed on 9 June after being taken into custody. The last official statement from the PRC government about the “Tank Man” came from CPC General Secretary Jiang Zemin in a 1990 interview; when asked about the whereabouts of the “Tank Man”, Jiang responded: “I think never killed.” After order was restored in Beijing on 4 June, protests continued throughout much of mainland China for several days. There were large protests in Hong Kong, where people again wore black in protest. There were protests in Guangzhou, and large-scale protests in Shanghai with a general strike. There were also protests in other countries, many adopting the use of black armbands as well. However, the government soon regained control. A political purge followed in which officials responsible for organizing or condoning the protests were removed, and protest leaders jailed. According to Amnesty International at least 300 people were killed in Chengdu on 5 June. Troops in Chengdu used concussion grenades, truncheons, knives and electric cattle prods against civilians. Hospitals were ordered to not accept students and on the second night the ambulance service was stopped by police.
Number of deaths
The number of dead and wounded remains unclear because of the large discrepancies between the different estimates. Some of the early estimates were based on reports of a figure of 2,600 from the Chinese Red Cross. The official Chinese government figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded. According to an analysis by Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times, “The true number of deaths will probably never be known, and it is possible that thousands of people were killed without leaving evidence behind. But based on the evidence that is now available, it seems plausible that about fifty soldiers and policemen were killed, along with 400 to 800 civilians.” An intelligence report received by the Soviet politburo estimated that 3,000 protesters were killed, according to a document found in the Soviet archive. The Chinese government has maintained that there were no deaths within the square itself, although videos taken there at the time recorded the sound of gunshots. State Council claimed that the basic statistics were: “Five thousand PLA soldiers and officers wounded, and more than two thousand local people (counting students, city people, and protesters together) also wounded.” Chinese commentators have pointed out that this obvious imbalance in casualties questions the military competence of the PLA. They also said no one died on Tiananmen Square itself. Yuan Mu, the spokesman of the State Council, said that about 300 soldiers and civilians died, including 23 students from universities in Beijing, along with a number of people he described as “ruffians”. According to Chen Xitong, Beijing mayor, 200 civilians and several dozen soldiers died. Other sources stated that 3,000 civilians and 6,000 soldiers were injured. In May 2007, CPPCC member from Hong Kong, Chang Ka-mun said 300 to 600 people were killed in Tiananmen Square. He echoed that “there were armed thugs who weren’t students.”
According to The Washington Post first Beijing bureau chief, Jay Mathews: “A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square, but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully. Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances.” US ambassador James Lilley’s account of the massacre notes that US State Department diplomats witnessed Chinese troops opening fire on unarmed people and based on visits to hospitals around Beijing a minimum of hundreds had been killed. A strict focus on the number of deaths within Tiananmen Square itself does not give an accurate picture of the carnage and overall death count, since Chinese civilians were fired on in the streets surrounding Tiananmen Square. In addition, students are reported to have been fired on after they left the Square, especially in the area near the Beijing concert hall.
Estimates of deaths from different sources, in descending order:
10,000 dead (including civilians and soldiers) – Soviet Union.
7,000 deaths – NATO intelligence.
4,000 to 6,000 civilians killed, but no one really knows – Edward Timperlake.
Over 3,700 killed, excluding disappearance or secret deaths and those denied medical treatment – PLA defector citing a document circulating among officers.
2,600 had officially died by the morning of 4 June (later denied) – the Chinese Red Cross. An unnamed Chinese Red Cross official estimated that, in total, 5,000 people were killed and 30,000 injured.
Closer to 1,000 deaths, according to Amnesty International and some of the protest participants, as reported in a Time article. Other statements by Amnesty have characterized the number of deaths as hundreds.
300 to 1,000 according to a Western diplomat that compiled estimates.
400 to 800 plausible according to the New York Times’ Nicholas D. Kristof. He developed this estimate using information from hospital staff and doctors, and from “a medical official with links to most hospitals”.
180–500 casualties, according to a declassified NSA document which referred to early casualty estimates.
241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded, according to the Chinese government.
186 named individuals confirmed dead at the end of June 2006 – Professor Ding Zilin of the Tiananmen Mothers. The Tiananmen Mothers’ list includes some people whose deaths were not directly at the hands of the army, such as a person who committed suicide after the incident on 4 June
