Beijing Tiananmen Square Crackdown Revealed- 200,000 Troops and 700 Tanks
Posted by chinaview on August 12, 2007
Japan Today, Japan, August 2, 2007-
HONG KONG — A total of 200,000 troops and 700 tanks were deployed in the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, a Hong Kong-based human rights monitoring group said Wednesday. The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said the 200,000 troops came from five provinces.
On June 4, 1989, after weeks of student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, troops backed by tanks crushed the demonstrations, killing hundreds if not thousands of people. Beijing has been reluctant to reinvestigate what really happened and defined the crackdown as a “political disturbance that happened between spring and summer in 1989.”
The center’s statement said the troops and 700 tanks were deployed in May and they had no idea what happened in Beijing, only that they received “clear orders” from late President Deng Xiaoping that they were “allowed to open fire.”
© 2007 Kyodo News.
- original report from JapanToday.com : Details about Tiananmen Square crackdown revealed
