1 MASSACRE IN BEIJING A. INTRODUCTION During the night of 3 June and the early morning of 4 June 1989, troops of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), acting in accordance with the orders of the Chinese government, took military action to clear the crowds on the streets of central Beijing and in Tiananmen Square. This was part of an attempt to suppress the prodemocracy movement which in the preceding seven weeks had focused much of its public activity in the Square. With brute force and little regard for considerations of humanity, the army cleared the Square and other parts of the city. In the course of that action, thousands of civilians were fired on by troops, often indiscriminately, particularly when the troops were making their way towards Tiananmen Square. Estimates of the dead range from several hundred to many thousand; and many thousands were injured. The government has followed up the killings of 4 June with a vigorous campaign of repression in an attempt to suppress the pro-democracy movement completely and to punish those who participated in it. Since the massacre in Beijing, there have been further arbitrary killings by troops in other parts of the country; thousands of students, intellectuals, workers and others active in the pro-democracy movement have reportedly been arrested and some of these have been subjected to physical abuse or other forms of degrading treatment; individuals have been put on trial, sentenced to death in expedited or summary procedures and executed within days for counter-revolutionary crimes, crimes against public security and other offences in blatant violation of accepted international human rights standards. The government has declared a number of existing associations illegal, has mounted a vast propaganda campaign designed to justify its actions, and has deprived its citizens of access to information from outside or independent sources. This report is an attempt to focus the attention of the international community on the gravity of the human rights situation in China. It is our hope that such awareness will lead to immediate and effective action by the human rights bodies of the United Nations, individual governments, and non-governmental organizations to help stop the human rights abuses in China. We seek, in particular, to mobilize public opinion on behalf of those who are detained or at risk of arrest. Detailed appendices with reports of detained persons are appended to the text. The information in the text is drawn from a variety of source, including many eyewitness accounts. Some of this testimony is drawn from interviews, as well as from Chinese language sources that have not previously been published or reported on in the Western or English-language press. The findings in the report cannot be regarded as comprehensive, as it is still too early to assess the full extent of human rights violations in China during and after the massacre. Nevertheless, the International League for Human Rights has accumulated a significant body of information, based largely on direct testimony, which we believe to contain compelling information on the events that took place. Most of the people interviewed or quoted managed to flee China, despite government restrictions leaving. In leaving the country, and in presenting their testimony, they risk considerable personal danger. Many of the sources were interviewed privately and have asked that they remain anonymous, to protect themselves and their families from reprisals. We have, of course, respected their wishes, identifying such sources only by letter or number. -2. The report also seeks to enhance understanding of the recent events in China by examining Chinese laws, procedures and administrative actions against International human rights standards. To this end, the report explains where and why the actions of the Chinese government violate those standards. B. MASSACRE IN BEIJING Martial law was declared in Beijing on 20 May 1989. The chain of events which led to this is described in the next section of this report (section C). The declaration of martial law was aimed at suppressing the student-led demonstrations for political reform sparked by the death on 15 April 1989 of Hu Yaobang, former Party GeneralSecretary who had been ousted in 1987. Even though hundreds of thousands of people participated in the demonstrations on various occasions, they were overwhelmingly peaceful. There had been no riots or large-scale violence in the city at any stage between 15 April 1989 and 19 May 1989. Nonetheless, martial law was imposed on parts of Beijing. On the night of 19 May 1989 and during the next few days, troops surrounding Beijing attempted to enter the city without using force, but were prevented from doing so by students and residents using non-violent forms of resistance to stem the troops' advance persuasion, crowds blocking the roads, and vehicles used as roadblocks. No forcible attempt was made by troops to enter central Beijing until the night of 3 June. Nor was there any serious violence in Beijing before the martial law troops resorted to the use of force on that night. I. THE MILITARY ASSAULT 1. The incursion of troops Into the city On the night of 3 June, troops converged on central Beijing and Tiananmen Square from all directions,' though the main assault seems to have come from the west along Changan Avenue, the Avenue of Eternal Peace". By the time the operation was completed, hundreds, perhaps thousands, were dead; many thousands were injured. Estimates of the number who were killed and injured have to date been based on information that is partial and incomplete. We do not yet know the true extent of the loss of life suffered on the night of 3 June and the morning of 4 June. But we do know that it was large by any standards. The process of assembling a complete account of the actions of the army from the evidence of eye witnesses is still in progress. The government's version of events portrays the deaths as the result of defensive action by heroic soldiers who were attacked without provocation and who used lethal force in a restrained manner only when it was absolutely necessary. Unofficial accounts tell a much different story, one in which very few soldiers, but hundreds and probably thousands of civilians, were killed. These figures are discussed in more detail below. The Chinese government has gone to considerable lengths to prevent the true figures from ever emerging. It has prohibited hospitals and mortuaries from disclosing figures of fatalities; troops burnt bodies on the spot in Tiananmen Square, 1 A map of Tiananmen Square and its immediate surroundings appears as Appendix A. -3. presumably without identification or notification to relatives; and army helicopters were used to airlift bodies and remains to unknown locations. The Chinese government has also signally failed to carry out its own public investigation of the deaths, preferring instead to reiterate plainly untrue figures and implausible accounts of the military action. From eyewitness accounts of military shooting and the gruesome evidence of dead and wounded persons in mortuaries and hospitals, it is possible to get some idea of the extent of the casualties, although the evidence presently available most probably understates the extent of the loss of life because of the Chinese government's efforts to conceal the facts and the presumed under-reporting of deaths of those who did not go to hospitals for treatment. Accounts of the progress of troops_towards_the_centre of the city tell of a number of encounters between troops moving towards Tiananmen Square from the outskirts of the city and civilians seeking to bar their progress, in most cases by erecting makeshift barricades in attempts to prevent the passage of armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and tanks. The civilians also attempted to persuade troops not to advance by explaining to them the students' cause. A study of the numerous reports of these encounters shows a common pattern: the troops were faced with human barricades and sometimes also vehicles used by the crowd as barricades; the troops fired on the people indiscriminately; armoured vehicles and tanks drove blindly into the crowd and crushed human beings into paste; sometimes the crowd responded to the army's excesses by attacking and burning armoured vehicles. Shots were fired not just to disperse the crowd but also to kill people_escaping, retreating, or begging for restraint. People in buildings were also shot at. The troops made no attempt to arrest or detain people as they pressed towards their objective of clearing the streets and the Square, but resorted to the use of lethal weapons with little restraint. A few such encounters were described by a student acting as a picket for the Autonomous Federation of Non-Beijing University Students (AFNUS)(DA):2 At 10 p.m. on 3 June, on the other side of Nanchizi near the Beijing Hotel, a convoy of military vehicles was coming towards us. A woman student from the Beijing Teachers' University stopped them and spoke to the vanguard. She said, 'PLA soldiers, you are the people's army. We students have nothing against you. We are compatriots. Please do not aim your rifles at the people. We are not mobsters. We are university students who love peace and freedom. ... Before she could finish, a burst of sub-machine gun killed her there and then Several of my other schoolmates had rushed to Xidan. Assault rifles had started firing; tanks were approaching. What did the civilians there use to stop the troops? They stood there hand in hand, unarmed the student pickets, the civilian pickets, elderly women and men and the zealous workers. All these people who sent us food in the day time, who comforted us, encouraged us and voiced their support for us, formed layer after layer of human barricades. Tanks were closing in, the vanguard were emerging from both sides, all wearing helmets and camouflaged uniforms - they were their death squads. The tanks moved forward, then paused and soldiers immediately dashed out, apparently with their guns aimed at us. Many of the students swore not to give way and shouted slogans like 'Down with fascists!' 'Down with autocrats!' At this instant, The sources for quotations and other references cited as 'D' are listed In Appendix D. References DA-DS are to sources available in English or English translation; references to D1-D18 are to sources available only in Chinese. the machine guns on top of the tanks were tilted down and started strafing the crowd. The assault troops kept firing at the crowd. They raked places where the loudest noise came from, the loudest chanting of slogans and the loudest shouting. Furious people on the street who threw stones and bricks or those who might be in the convoy's way were swept with bullets and then rolled over by tanks.... When I arrived at Jianguomen, I saw that many students were killed, some were crushed by tanks and could no longer be recognized as human beings.... I spotted a woman university student with long hair who was bayonetted in the chest by a soldier. As the girl fell, the soldier delivered a few more strokes on her back. She was stabbed to death on the spot. The killing was most severe opposite Xidan and the Military Museum. Some of the students were trying to escape; some tripped and were crushed by the tanks tailing after them while others were fired at indiscriminately by assault rifles.... A few Individuals who survived the first shot were given a second or even a third shot to make sure that there would be no survivors. On the outskirts [of the Square], the massacre continued for several hours. At 2 a.m. on 4 June, It was the height of the slaughter. Sitting at Tiananmen Square, one could hear gunshots, machine gun bursts, noise from the tanks and screams of the people. To the south and north of the People's Monument, the sky was brightly lit by tracers. By 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., the outskirts were cleared, most of the students had been slaughtered. A reporter of the China-financed Hong Kong daily. Wen Wei Po, wrote: The citizens had again set up blockades of burning vehicles. The troops were by now shooting ruthlessly and indiscriminately at bystanders. They chased after the people among houses and into the hutongs (1.e. lanes), claiming victims aged from under ten to over eighty. (DE) A Beijing student wrote: They used machine guns to fire on the human barricade. When the crowd retreated into the hutongs, they moved forward to fire sweepingly. Blood ran like a river. People in buildings who turned on their lights or opened their doors to watch were shot at. Eyewitnesses estimated that about 100 people were killed at Muxidi, and about 30 killed at Xidan. (D1) A student of the Beijing Institute of Chemical Technology said the following when interviewed by a Hong Kong reporter (DC): A 'dare to die squad' made up of Qinghua University students went to block the army vehicles, and they were later joined by some citizens. An armoured carrier came from the east of Tiananmen. We were told by citizens who had been following this carrier that It had crushed more than 60 people to death at Xinhuamen. We students went up to swarm the carrier, and inserted wooden sticks and iron rods into Its roller-belts. The carrier stopped. Some people spread a quilt blanket soaked with petrol onto the carrier, and burnt it. After burning for 20 minutes, 3 soldiers emerged from the carrier. They had blood on their faces, and their uniforms were on fire. The citizens started beating them up, scolding them for crushing people to death. We A Chinese reporter who managed to publish in Hong Kong his report of a similar incident wrote (DI): The armoured vehicle approached quickly from the west. As the people were very closely packed, the vehicle simply rammed into the crowd. Immediately, I saw 7 people crushed under its wheels - their bodies were no longer identifiable .... The armoured vehicle moved to and fro, intending to clear the way for the troops to pass. As it had killed so many people, and as the crowd was determined to protect the unarmed students, the people used concrete stands to set up new barricades. The vehicle broke through the first line of stands but not the second. Then the people used some iron bars to stop its wheels. Somebody lit a bottle filled with petrol, dropped it into the vehicle through its door and covered it up with huge blankets. After about 10 minutes, a solder emerged, waving white underwear which he used as a white flag. There were four of them altogether, two of whom were old soldiers with white hair, their rank being at least above that of a lieutenant-colonel. Everybody was very furious when they came out and was prepared to tear them into pieces. The soldiers said, 'We understand. We do not want to do this. But we have no choice. Please forgive us.' The people asked, 'Who will forgive you? You are murderers, you have killed so many people, you are so brutal, you must pay for it!' However, the students dissuaded the crowd from killing the soldiers, saying, 'Protect them, for if you hurt them they will have the excuse for further suppression.' I thought that the students were right. If not for the above reason, these soldiers deserved to die for what they had done. The students were more considerate of the general situation and insisted on non-violent methods to fight against violence. These soldiers were escorted away by the students and were very likely to have been wounded slightly. Later, the armoured vehicle was burnt and this immediately provided the excuse for the government to label the movement as a 'counterrevolutionary riot'. However, why was this armoured vehicle burnt? They would not admit the truth: it was because it had crushed so many people and aroused so great an anger that it was burnt. According to Cheng Ming magazine (published in Hong Kong) (D4): An eyewitness said that at around 1 a.m. on 4 June, military lorries, tanks and armoured vehicles moved at a speed of over 60 km an hour and ran over more than 100 people at Ljubukou, including children, elderly people and even pregnant women. At Nanchizi, more than 100 people were also killed. A Hong Kong student who was in 'Beijing at that time wrote when he came back (DH): At around 1 p.m., I and Qing Chen, U Lan Ju, Chen Qing Hua and the others left the headquarters and went to the west part of the Square. There we saw an armoured vehicle speeding Into the crowd. The atmosphere grew tense at once. Everyone swiftly helped to form road blocks with the railings avallable, but that armoured vehicle turned back and sped into the crowd again. It was really coldblooded murder. The Hong Kong reporter Zhang Jiefeng was at Changan Avenue at 1:45 a.m. on 4 June. She saw a number of armoured vehicles on fire and even exploding on the road. (D8) She wrote (D9): |