June 30, 1989 excerpts from the "Los Angeles Times"
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June 23, 1989 excerpts from the "Los Angeles Times" front page: Associated Press photo; caption: "A passer-by reads an execution notice outside People's High Court in Beijing. The check indicates the person has been put to death." "Execution Toll Up to 27 in China; 13 More Seized" "7 Are Put to Death in Beijing as Action Against Protests Continues; Agitation for Taiwan Alleged" By David Holley, Times Staff Writer BEIJING - China's bloody suppression of pro-democracy agitation continued Thursday, with seven protesters executed in Beijing and the known toll by execution rising to 27. Authorities also announced the arrests of 13 men accused of being special agitators working for the rival Nationalist government in Taiwan. The men were accused on state-run television of having promoted the recent wave of student-led demonstrations, which ended with heavy casualties early this month when the Chinese army shot its way into t...
June 22, 1989 excerpts from the "Los Angeles Times" front page: "3 Shot in First Executions for China Protests" By David Holley, Times Staff Writer BEIJING - Shanghai executioners, carrying out the first in a growing wave of death sentences imposed on anti-government protesters, Wednesday {June 21, 1989] killed three men convicted of setting a train on fire. Xu Guoming, a brewery worker; Yan Xuerong, a radio factory employee, and Bian Hanwu, an unemployed worker, were shot before a crowd of observers, a Shanghai city government spokesman said. He gave no further details, but executions in China normally are carried out with a single shot to the head. The executions came despite pleas for clemency from the United States and several Western European nations. The three young men had been part of an angry mob that attacked the Beijing-Shanghai express on the night of June 6 after it plowed into a crowd of demonstrators and killed six people. Those blo...
June 21, 1989 Excerpts from the "Los Angeles Times" from the front page: "Bush Orders a Cut in China Contacts, Will Oppose Loans" By James Gerstenzang, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON - President Bush cut off most high-level contacts between the United States and the Chinese government Tuesday [June 20, 1989] and ordered action to block China's access to loans from international financial institutions. The new measures, a break from the Administration's strategy of using diplomatic pressure rather than sanctions against the Chinese, were imposed to protest the death sentences given to 11 protesters for attacking soldiers or vehicles during pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing and Shanghai. Administration officials hope that the tactic will prompt Chinese leaders to pull back from widespread arrests and prosecutions of protesters and perhaps head off executions. "The President felt it was necessary to send a strong signal of unhappiness ...
June 20, 1989 Excerpts from the "Los Angeles Times" Photograph on the top of Page One from he Associated Press; caption: "The Great Wall of China at Mutianyu, normally an area choked with tourists, was deserted Monday [June 18, 1989]. In Beijing, convoys of trucks full of troops rumbled out of the city, further reducing the military presence." Page 10, article: "China's Underground Presses Seized as Crackdown on Media Continues" "Lies written in ink can never disguise facts written in blood." - Lu Xun, Chinese writer, 1926 quoted at the top of the article By Daniel Williams, Times Staff Writer BEIJING - Along with the pageant of arrests, interrogations, confessions and handcuffings shown night after night on state television, there have also appeared scenes of raids on printing presses in Beijing. The machinery is shown being pulled out of dark rooms in monotonous housing projects and loaded on army trucks - another examp...
June 19, 1989 excerpts from the "Los Angeles Times" "China Imposes New Curbs on Travel Abroad" By Daniel Williams, Times Staff Writer BEIJING - China moved to restrict the exit of citizens who have already received permission to travel abroad, prompting a small run on foreign embassies today by Chinese seeking visas. Lines began forming at the U.S. Embassy here late Sunday night [June 18, 1989] as word spread that the government had ordered Chinese who already have travel permits from their government to reapply for permission to leave. Many Chinese seemed to believe that obtaining a foreign visa might exempt them from the new rule. According to state radio and television broadcasts, citizens who have received travel documents will have to go back to the office where they were issued. Diplomatic observers viewed the rule as a means of blocking the exit of student activists placed on government blacklists. "In Beijing, Gorbachev Sees His Worst Fe...
June 18, 1989 excerpts from the "Los Angeles Times" "The Times Poll" "Regard for China Plummets in U.S." By George Skelton, Times Staff Writer The high regard Americans had for China only three months ago has turned bitterly sour in the wake of the Communist regime's bloody repression of pro-democracy demonstrators, according to The Times Poll. In a dramatic turnaround, three-fourths of the American public now has an unfavorable "overall opinion of China," the poll found. In sharp contrast, three-fourths of Americans held a favorable opinion in March. But Americans strongly support President Bush's restrained response to the massacre in Beijing and to the Chinese leadership's escalating crackdown against the pro-democracy movement there and in other cities. They emphatically endorse the President's decision not to recall the U.S. ambassador from Beijing. Bush's Popularity Up In fact, The Times' nationwi...
June 15, 1989 Excerpt from the "Los Angeles Times" from a Times Staff Writer "2 Chinese Diplomats in Bay Area Ask FBI's Help" A husband and wife who disappeared from the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco last week contacted the FBI for help Wednesday, apparently to decide whether they will seek political asylum, sources close to the couple said. The couple, identified by friends as Cheng Huiming and Feng Jie, are the second set of diplomats to leave the consulate in recent days over the Chinese government crackdown on student protesters June 3-4. They worked in the consulate's education section are said to be hiding with students in the Bay Area. FBI officials would neither confirm nor deny reports that the couple contacted them. But Michael Shien, city editor of the San Francisco-based newspaper, Young China Daily, said the couple definitely plans to defect because they do not want to sign student blacklists. The diplomats were scheduled to...
June 14, 1989 Excerpt from the "Los Angeles Times" "Signs of Fervor Nearly Erased From Beijing" by Daniel Williams, Times Staff Writer Beijing - Most signs that there once was boiling political fervor on the streets of Beijing have been all but erased. The city is like an air-brushed photograph in which key images have been eliminated. One begins to wonder if they ever existed. No one appears to dare to put up posters denouncing the June 4 military assault on Tian An Men Square and its peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators. Once, hastily posted messages and photocopied photos competed for attention with the government's martial-law orders. Now the denunciations have disappeared. So have any pro-democracy posters. "They're Watching Us" Terror Felt in Homeland Spreads to U.S. by John J. Goldman and Ashley Dunn, Times Staff Writers Two days after the 18,000 demonstrators rallied outside the United Nations and the Chinese Consulat...
June 13, 1989 from the "Los Angeles Times" A photo from Associated Press, the person in the center seems to have his head down, I think there are two people on either side of the man in the center - the man on the left in the photo seems to be gripping the neck of the man in the center . . . caption: "Suspected dissident is dragged by the hair to an interrogation session in Beijing in a scene shown on Chinese television."
June 12, 1989 from the front page of the "Los Angeles Times" "Deliberate Shocker?" "Brazen Beijing Killings: Two Theories Arise" by Jim Mann, Times Staff Writer [NEWS ANALYSIS] excerpts "Hong Kong - To the rest of the world, the brazen openness of China's massacre of unarmed civilians in Beijing seems inexplicable" "Foreign correspondents present in Beijing in those bloody pre-dawn hours of June 4 felt almost as though Chinese authorities were handing them a telephone and inviting them to phone home with news of the carnage" wait a minute - interesting article as it continues - but in other reports, it was a daring struggle to get videotape out, getting coverage of WHAT was happening was NOT easy! I recall watching the live video from the window of the hotel room in Beijing - I thought it was live coverage that was being beamed all over the world through different broadcasters, through a single feed - then the au...
June 11, 1989 - front page of the "Los Angeles Times" Now, just one photo (from Reuters), caption: "Chinese soldier is caught up in crowd of students and citizens at a Shanghai memorial service and pro-democracy march." I wonder if that photo was used by the government to identify people to be arrested. One article only, on the front page, regarding China, from Times Wire Services: "Deng Lauds Suppression of Protests" "Leader is Back on Scene; 50,000 Hold Rally in Shanghai" excerpts: Beijing - Senior leader Deng Xiaoping emerged Friday to praise the Chinese army as a "steel Great Wall" for crushing the movement for democracy, and sources said that police were arresting intellectuals accused of encouraging the protest." Military presence was felt throughout the city. Convoys of trucks and foot soldiers patrolled by day. More than 100 tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbled through the center of Beijing afte...
June 10, 1989 "Economic Reforms to Continue, Deng Vows" "Ailing Ruler Resurfaces, Praises Army" by David Holley and Daniel Williams, Times Staff Writers "Beijing - China's leadership puzzle began to fall into place Friday with the reappearance of Communist patriarch Deng Xiao-ping, who endorsed last weekend's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators but promised that economic reforms will continue." "Deng, who had been away from public view for three weeks, said the crackdown against student protesters centered at Tian An Men Square was needed to defend Communist rule in China. He accused a 'very small number of people' of 'attempting to overthrow the Communist Party, topple the socialist system and subvert the People's Republic of China to establish a bourgeois republic.'" So, looks like the civil war about to engulf the nation has faded away. Meanwhile . . . "Shanghai Students Defy Regime...
June 9, 1989 So, it seemed that perhaps the threat of civil war across China was not so strong. Looking back at the "Los Angeles Times" front page, Times staff writers Daniel Williams and David Holley reported that "the government issued a new set of martial-law regulations that appeared to foreshadow a renewed crackdown on student dissidents - something that was borne out today when troops moved in and raided Beijing University." Premier Li Peng "appeared publicly for the first time since the weekend massacre and briskly praised soldiers for a job well done." "Li's televised appearance added weight to word that hard-line, conservative Communist Party leaders had emerged victorious in a power struggle with reformists who sympathized with student demands to open China's political system. Li's chief rival, disgraced Communist Party chief Zhao Zi-yang, has been neither heard from nor officially spoken of for three weeks." ...
June 8, 1989 On the front page of the "Los Angeles Times" a photo (Associated Press) from Beijing, caption: "Curious residents of Beijing survey the military hardware and troops in Tian An Men Square, scene of last weekend's slaughter." In a box also on the front page: Leaders flee Beijing. Page 10 Shanghai train burned. Page 10 Troops on the move. Page 10 Travelers tell of chaos. Page 11 2 from UCLA missing. Page 11 Embassy personnel's family advised to leave for the States. Uncertainty, impending civil war that had been totally unexpected but now analysts were opining that the very rigidity and control of the one-party system contributed to "China's sudden plunge into turmoil, with the government retreating into impotence and a divided army arrayed as if to wage civil war, has left stunned observers grappling for an explanation: How could the order of a powerful nation turn so quickly to chaos?" ("Rigid Regime Pave...
June 7, 1989 On the front page of the "Los Angeles Times" a photo from Beijing, the caption: "Beijing strollers pass hulks of trucks that were reportedly abandoned and torched by rebel troops." So, reading this, was I being told that the rebel troops were different from the troops that drove those trucks? Or that they HAD been driving them but rebelled and did not follow orders? Then, what happened to those rebel troops that torched those trucks? From the same front page, various articles indicate that things really were wobbly at the top and - one article by John M. Broder, Times Staff Writer, was headlined as follows: MAY BE PREPARING TO FIGHT ITSELF China Military Divided by Regional, Ethnic Rivalries "The deep divisions that have torn the Chinese military in the wake of the student democracy movement stem from personal, regional and ethnic rivalries, some dating to the early days of the Chinese revolution, according to American analysts....
June 6, 2019 from the "Los Angeles Times" on June 6, 1989, from the front page: "China Teeters on Edge of Civil war as Rival Forces Mobilize" Under the headline "Control of Beijing Seen" Times Staff Writers David Holley and Daniel Williams, wrote "China teetered on the edge of civil war, with troops presumed loyal to hard-line President Yang Shang-kun in control of central Beijing but positioned defensively at strategic points in apparent anticipation of attack by rival forces. "Troops and armored vehicles were reported moving toward Beijing from the east, according to Western diplomats who said they appeared to be opposed to the troops of the 27th Army that killed hundreds or perhaps thousands of people while taking control of the center of the capital over the weekend." "A military attache of the British colony of Hong Kong, reached by telephone this morning, said the Chinese air force has joined the effort to wrest control of Beiji...
June 5, 2019 The Crushing of Light June 5, 2019 at 11:44 PM From the "Los Angeles Times" - June 5, 1989 - page 15 A map, caption on the top: "Fear and Mourning on Campuses" From the caption at the bottom of the map: "As violence between protesters and People's Liberation Army troops continued in Beijing, students at Beijing University, seat of the pro-democracy movement, held memorial vigils on the sprawling campus. Troops reportedly surrounded Beijing Teachers University and another campus. Although there were no reports of any raids, students fear arrests may be near." The map provides a key to these locations: 1. Forbidden City 2. Beijing Hotel 3. Ministry of Public Security 4. Tian An Men Square 5. Great Hall of the People 6. Zhongnanhai The above locations are closely located to each other 1 directly north 6 to the west, 2 to the east 5, 4 & 3 to the south of 6 and 2 (Tian An Man Square located between the Great Hall of the People and the...
"The Crushing of Light" The crushing of light is really an impossible thing Light travels too quickly for lies to catch it It emerges in places unexpected It fills hearts without notice It sets free the minds of captors and captives - Susan Jacob (written in 1999, thinking of tenth anniversary of Tiannenman Square)