Archived "Who Died in Beijing and Why?" The real story of Tiananmen that Western media missed. Overlooked for 25 years and counting... [PDF] (voat.co)
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Archived on: 2/12/2017 1:51:00 AM
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Archived "Who Died in Beijing and Why?" The real story of Tiananmen that Western media missed. Overlooked for 25 years and counting... [PDF] (voat.co)
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[–] Blitzcrunk 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago (edited ago)
Its a long article, so I'll summarize what I've read so far (intro and part I). The western media usually focuses on the story of the students in the square, but the real massacre happened outside the square. The majority of victims where not the students but rather the laobaixing protecting them. This is because it was more politically convenient to kill the laobaixing who, in the beginning of the reform era, did not enjoy the "protected" status that the intelligentsia had been given to offset their persecution from the Mao-era.
[–] kulio8 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
That's a very good assessment. But the western media has not overlooked this for 25 years, rather they made mistakes while reporting from a war zone, 25 years ago.
The Tiananmen papers have been out for what, a decade now, Many of the journalists have corrected their reporting over the years.
Further, this new narrative of events in some ways makes the party and government look much worse. They didn't kill the students because they were the children of the elite, instead they butchered the masses and allowed the students to flee.
Indeed the entire argument that, well all the killing was several kilometers away, so the reporting was totally wrong is...hardly a game changer.
[–] Blitzcrunk ago
This article was written in 1990. So I think the focus was not that western media was misreporting for the past 25 years, but that it was misreporting for the past 1 year. :P
Yes I agree the new narrative is much more tragic.
[–] rexgao ago
Thank you for summary. It is a tragic event. Government was killing, yet protesters were also not that perfect.