Wake up（353）

 

353

 

Liu Xiaosheng said: In June 1989, as the demonstrations continued to escalate and expand, Deng Xiaoping, chairman of the Central Military Commission, the top military leader, finally made a decision: to take decisive action. At that time, conflicts occurred in Muxidi. Jiang Jielian, the son of Ding Zilin, one of the initiators of the Tiananmen Mothers Movement, was shot and killed in Fuxingmenwai Street in Muxidi at about 11:00 p.m. on June 3.

On the evening of June 3, various state-run TV stations successively warned Beijing residents to stay indoors and not to go out; however, encouraged by the successful blocking of the army in the previous two weeks, a large number of citizens still took to the streets to stop the army from advancing.

The Chinese People's Liberation Army troops are gradually advancing towards Tiananmen Square from all directions in Beijing. The 38th Army, the 63rd Army and the 28th Army are responsible for the west; the 15th Army, the 20th Army, the 26th Army and the 54th Army are responsible to the south; the 39th Army and 1st Garrison Division to the east; and the 40th and 64th Armies to the north.

At around 10:00 p.m., the 38th Army began shooting at the demonstrators at the Wukesong intersection on Chang'an Avenue, about 10 kilometers west of the square. The crowd, surprised by the army ordering live ammunition, began throwing objects at the troops.

That night, Song Xiaoming, a 32-year-old aerospace technician, became the first confirmed deceased. The army has since been accused of using dum ammunition, which shatters when fired into a human body, causing severe trauma.

At 10:30, the marching troops were forced to temporarily stop at Muxidi, about 5 kilometers west of Tiananmen Square, to try to clear the temporary roadblocks because the people pushed the double-section trolleybuses onto the road and set them on fire.

Residents living in nearby apartments also tried to stop the military convoy, but the 38th Army opened fire again, causing heavy casualties.

According to the report of the dead after the Tiananmen Mothers investigation, a total of 36 people died in Muxidi.

Soldiers also opened fire on apartments near Muxidi, killing people on balconies or indoors, including several senior Chinese officials who were observing developments at the apartment.

The 38th Army finally smashed the tram carriages open with armored personnel carriers, and continued to confront the demonstrators who tried to hastily build roadblocks or organize human chains. cause casualties.

The paratroopers of the 15th Airborne Corps in charge of the south also used live ammunition to shoot, and also caused civilian casualties in Zhushikou, Tianqiao and Qianmen. However, there are also opinions that such statements are distortions caused by long-distance observation. CBS reporter Ross at the scene also said that no soldiers fired shots, but only tried to disperse the crowd, which makes it doubtful whether there was a shooting accident.

Claims that the troops fired live ammunition and caused casualties angered Beijing residents, some of whom began attacking soldiers with sticks, stones and homemade petrol bombs, and even set fire to military vehicles.

Mainland Chinese authorities and their supporters say the military is using force primarily in self-defense and claim that troop casualties justify the use of weapons, with reports of soldiers being burned alive in the streets or beaten to death by others record. According to Wu Renhua's research, it was only after the military opened fire at 10:00 p.m. on June 3 that the masses began to fight back against the troops. However, during the eviction, some students and residents tried to protect the soldiers under attack, while most military units refused to carry out orders to shoot civilians.

At 8:30 p.m., the presence of military helicopters over Tiananmen Square prompted demonstrators on various university campuses to call on students to join them. At 10:00 p.m., the demonstrators held the inauguration ceremony of Tiananmen Democracy University near the pedestal of the Goddess of Democracy as scheduled. But at 10:16, loudspeakers controlled by the government warned that troops could take any enforcement measures during martial law.

At 10:30 in the evening, as witnesses who saw the army shooting live ammunition entered Tiananmen Square from the west and south sides of downtown Beijing one after another, the demonstrators and the masses in Tiananmen Square also learned about the violence.

At midnight, student loudspeakers announced that a student had been killed on West Chang'an Avenue near the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution, sending the crowd in the square into a mood of gloom. Li Lu, the deputy commander of the Student Headquarters, immediately asked the students to maintain unity and insist on using non-violent means to continue to occupy Tiananmen Square; at 00:30 in the morning, Wuer Kaixi accused a female student of Beijing Normal University of leaving After being killed on campus, Wuer Kaixi was taken away from the square by an ambulance because of sudden fainting. At this time, 70,000 to 80,000 people remained in Tiananmen Square.

At about 12:15 in the morning, the military began to fire flares to provide nighttime illumination, and the first Type 63 armored personnel carrier appeared from the west side of Tiananmen Square and passed the road in front of the square quickly, and the second armored vehicle appeared about five minutes later , both heading towards East Chang'an Avenue.

At around 12:30 in the morning, two armored personnel carriers arrived at the Guangnan side of Tiananmen Square, and the students threw concrete blocks at the military vehicles one after another. After one of the armored personnel carriers suddenly broke down and could not move, the demonstrators destroyed the vehicle with sticks and set it on fire with quilts doused in gasoline. The three soldiers who escaped urgently because their vehicles were burned were beaten by the demonstrators, but the students organized a cordon and escorted the three people to the first aid station of the National Museum of China on the east side of the square for treatment.

Afterwards, student leaders once gave up non-violent means and prepared to launch retaliatory actions under great pressure. Among them, Chai Ling once used a loudspeaker to call on students to prepare to fight against the "shameless government." But in the end she and Li Lu agreed to continue the practice of maintaining peaceful means and to confiscate sticks, stones and glass bottles held by the students that could be considered weapons.

At about 1:30 in the morning, the front lines of the 38th Army and the 15th Airborne Army arrived at the north and south sides of Tiananmen Square respectively. They began to block the surrounding area of ​​Tiananmen Square and separated the demonstrators from the residents who went to support them, and killed several demonstrators in the process. At the same time, the 27th Group Army and the 65th Group Army emerged from the Great Hall of the People on the west side of Tiananmen Square, and the 24th Group Army also began to deploy at the National Museum of China on the east side.

After being surrounded by the army, thousands of demonstrators and people who remained in the square began to gather at the Monument to the People's Heroes in the center of the square.

After 2:00 a.m., the troops began to try to exert pressure on the demonstrators beside the Monument to the People’s Heroes; while the student radio kept calling on the army to give up the use of force, and mentioned: “We are peacefully petitioning for the democracy and freedom of the motherland and for the Chinese nation. Wealthy and powerful, please follow the wishes of the people and do not use force against students who peacefully petition..."

At about 2:30 a.m., several workers began erecting machine guns they dismantled from armored personnel carriers at the Monument to the People's Heroes, vowing revenge on the troops who had killed many of the demonstrators. After Hou Dejian persuaded the workers to give up their weapons, Liu Xiaobo publicly smashed another unloaded rifle on the railing of the monument to reaffirm the stand of the non-violent movement.

Afterwards, Shao Jiang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Beijing University Student Self-Government Federation who had seen the army shoot people to death in Muxidi, called on intellectuals to lead the demonstrators and the crowd to evacuate the square, saying that too many people had died.

Liu Xiaobo originally expressed his unwillingness to evacuate the square, but he was persuaded in the end, and together with Zhou Duo, Gao Xin, and Hou Dejian discussed the issue of evacuation with student leaders, but Chai Ling, Li Lu, Feng Congde and others initially All refused to evacuate.

At 3:30 in the morning, at the suggestion of two doctors affiliated with the Red Cross Society of China, Hou Dejian and Zhou Duo agreed to try to negotiate with the soldiers first. They then took an ambulance to the northeast corner of Tiananmen Square and met Ji Xinguo, political commissar of the 336th Corps of the 38th Army. Ji Xinguo immediately conveyed the request to the command headquarters of the martial law troops and obtained permission to open a passage for the students to safely evacuate to the southeast.

At 4 o'clock in the morning, the lights on Tiananmen Square suddenly went out, and at the same time the official loudspeaker announced: "The venue will be cleared now, and we agree with the students' appeal to evacuate the square." But at this time, the students sang "The Internationale" together, and thought that The army prepares for one last clearing mission.

At 4:30 a.m., Tiananmen Square was re-lit and a series of red flares were fired. At the same time, troops began to approach the monument from all directions and then redeployed within 10 meters of the demonstrators gathered at the Monument to the People's Heroes.

After Hou Dejian came back, he first tried to persuade the student leaders who had known beforehand to accept his agreement with the army. At about 4:32, Hou Dejian stated through the student broadcast that he had first negotiated with the army. However, many students who knew about this meeting for the first time Angrily accused him of being too timid. Later, Feng Congde explained on the radio that since there was no time to hold an emergency meeting, the collective actions of the students after the demonstration would be decided by oral voting.

But even though the voice of "persistence" was louder than "evacuation", Feng Congde still stated that "withdrawal" was the majority opinion and decided to lead the masses to evacuate from Tiananmen Square.

But around 4:40, soldiers in camouflage uniforms stormed the Monument to the People's Heroes and damaged the students' broadcasting facilities; while other troops beat dozens of students near the monument and seized or destroyed their cameras and recording equipment . Then the soldiers began to forcibly disperse the crowd near the Monument to the People's Heroes, and then some students and professors tried to persuade the students who still insisted on sitting at the bottom of the monument to leave.

At about 5:10 in the morning, the students began to leave the monument. The demonstrators held hands and evacuated to the passage arranged at the southeast corner of the square. However, because there were a lot of students sitting in the north of the square at that time, a considerable number of students left from the north side of the square. go.

At this time, the military asked those students who refused to leave Tiananmen Square to join the evacuation ranks. In addition to asking the remaining people to evacuate the square by shooting into the air, they also mobilized Type 59 tank troops to block the road to the square. . According to the students who evacuated from the north side, the army set up machine guns on the north side of the monument and fired at the students.

After confirming that all demonstrators had left the square, the military dispatched military helicopters to deliver large plastic bags and ordered soldiers to start clearing the square.

Beijing medical staff told Hong Kong reporters that the army put the corpses in the square into plastic bags and transported them away by military helicopters.

At 6:00 a.m. on June 4, when the group of students who had evacuated from Tiananmen Square were walking along the bicycle lane on West Chang’an Avenue to return to the campus, three tanks from the Xidan Post Office fired tear gas and charged into the crowd, causing Eleven students were injured.

On the morning of June 4, thousands of previously evacuated demonstrators, parents of those killed and injured in the clearing operation, and workers angered by the government's actions tried to re-enter Tiananmen Square from East Chang'an Avenue, but when the crowd approached the troops, the soldiers immediately went to the crowd. Shots were fired as a warning. However, as a few people were shot by the troops, disaffected people who temporarily evacuated the area then tried to re-occupy the square.

After that, the masses tried to enter Tiananmen Square many times, but the army continued to manage the square and closed it to the public for two weeks.

Liu Xiaosheng said: In this incident, the phenomenon of military disobedience also appeared. During this period, many senior officers and soldiers of the People's Liberation Army resisted the clearance order.

The 28th Army was surrounded by crowds in Muxidi on the morning of June 4. After being questioned and complained by the citizens, and seeing the scene in Beijing, the soldiers were shaken and abandoned their vehicles, and the entire army stagnated. Affected by the situation of the 28th Army, the headquarters of the martial law troops dispatched helicopters to supervise the battle over West Chang'an Avenue, and shouted with loudspeakers that the 28th Army would resolutely counterattack if it was blocked. At 5:00 p.m., the entire unit was withdrawn, and the 28th Army became the only unit that had not reached the martial law enforcement position designated by its superiors. Afterwards, army commander He Yanran and political commissar Zhang Mingchun were demoted and transferred due to "poor execution and wrong command".

Major General Xu Qinxian, commander of the 38th Group Army, refused to obey the mobilization order on the grounds that "the military order was incomplete and illegal, and there was no formal written notice". He was later sentenced to five years in prison by the military court. Because of this action, he was evaluated by the media as a "disobedient" officer. In 2009, Xu Qinxian said in an interview with "Apple Daily": "If you do something that has passed, you will have no regrets."