Xah Lee, 2008-11-17
Just saw Li Ao's TV show, on youtube, discussing the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989:
«李敖谈 “6.4天安门事件” 上» (Li Ao on Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, part 1 of 2)
«李敖谈 “6.4天安门事件” 下» (Li Ao on Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, part 2 of 2)
I think Li Ao is a bit zealous here. In summary, he's saying that foreign media painted the picture of Chinese “human rights” abuse, and cited 3 examples of how USA, in different incidents, also used military to disperse crowd, including setting fire on veteran protester's camp in 1932, killing anti-war protest students of Kent State University in 1970, and in a anti-US protest in Baghdad, 2 people are ran over by US tanks.
The first incident cited is interesting. I looked up, it is:
New York Times, July 29, 1932, (has bold headline “Troops Drive Veterans from Capital; Fire Camps There and at Anacostia; 1 Killed, Scores Hurt in Day of Strife”)
Wikipedia article for 1932 has this entry: “July 28 - U.S. President Herbert Hoover orders the U.S. Army to forcibly evict the Bonus Army of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C. Troops disperse the last of the Bonus Army the next day.”. For details, see: Bonus Army. The number of deaths is about 4.
The Kent state university incident, of anti-war protest, with 4 deaths in campus, is cited from: “Events That Shaped Century” (1998), a photo book published by Time-Life Books. amazon. That photo is very famous at the time. For detail of the incident, see: Kent State killings.
A interesting question of Li Ao's talk is that, when there is a large scale riot and the political situation is not stable, what would the government do? On one hand, you can run tanks and result in bad press. On the other, you risk political turmoil and civil war.
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