Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1999 22:00:51 +0800
From: HKVoD <democracy-AT-freeway.org.hk>
Subject: What Really Happened on the night of June 3rd, 1989 --- An


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	Hong Kong Voice of Democracy
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What Really Happened on the night of June 3rd, 1989 --- An Eyewitness Account

[Editor's note: It has been almost 10 years since the Tiananmen Square
Incident, but the exact details of what happened on the night of June 3rd,
1989 are still matters of controversy. Recently, we discovered the
following question was raised on the Notes and Queries Section (p.4 of
Yesteryear column) of the website of The Guardian, a renowned British
newspaper (http://www.guardian.co.uk): "The Tiananmen Square Massacre is
constantly referred to. Why have I never seen film or video footage of a
single death? The cameras were there, were they not?" We are very
surprised that, in some of the answers to the question, a few British
readers claimed it was the PLA soldiers who were being killed by the
demonstrators or the death list of the student demonstrators may not be
authentic.

As the 10th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Incident is approaching, we
believe it is essential that the historical facts of what happened in China
in June 1989 be collected and presented to the readers. We therefore
invited Mr Jonathan Mirsky to give an eyewitness account. Mr Mirsky was the
China correspondent of the London Observer in June 1989 and was assaulted
by the PLA soldiers on June 3rd. He received the 1990 International
Reporter of the Year Award for his June 1989 reporting. We also welcome
accounts or comments from other eyewitnesses to the Incident.]

I was the China correspondent of the London Observer newspaper late on the
night of 3 June, 1989, in front of the Forbidden City where the huge Mao
portrait hangs over the Tiananmen gate. While some of the People's Armed
Police were beating me up others were shooting demonstrators whom they had
clubbed to the ground. Minutes earlier the Army had fired directly into the
same crowd and the man next to me fell over with a red stain on his white
tee-shirt. I cannot swear that all the victims I saw shot died. I hope not.

In their book "China Wakes" (for which they received the Pulitzer Prize)
the NY 
Times' Nicholas Kritoff and Sheryl WuDunn describe seeing troops in the
Square 
firing into a crowd in which some people "fell to the ground, wounded or
dead." 
[p. 87] They saw more firing during the next two hours, "and more people
fell to 
the ground." They witnessed rickshaw drivers "bravely facing the soldiers,
to pick 
up the dead and wounded." [p. 87] To be sure, Mr Kristoff states "there was
no huge massacre of students within Tiananmen Square itself."  Most of the
killing,
he says, went on elsewhere. I agree. But killing in the Square? Absolutely.
        
Then there is the account by the Toronto Globe and Mail's veteran
China-reporter 
Jan Wong, in her "Red China Blues". This is the best eyewitness reporting I
have 
seen of what happened in the Square. Ms Wong and Cathy Sampson of The Times 
(London) lay on a balcony of the Peking Hotel, with their notebooks and
watches, looking across into the Square. Her description is long and
detailed. Three examples will serve: at 2:14 am on 4 June she saw " a
murderous volley" into a dense crowd. At 2:23 tanks "fired their machine
guns at the crowds. " [p. 252] At 3:12 "there was a tremendous round of
gunfire....The soldiers strafed ambulances and shot medical workers trying
to rescue the wounded...Between 3:15 and 3.23 I counted eighteen pedicabs
pass me carrying the dead and wounded." [p. 253]

I know Ms Wong to be a reliable witness because later that morning,
starting at 
9:46, she on a balcony, I on the street below, watched soldiers outside the
Peking Hotel fire into a large unarmed crowd a two-minute trot from
Tiananmen. Ms Wong counted three volleys and twenty bodies.  Altogether
that morning she recorded "eight long murderous volleys...Dozens died
before my eyes. " [p. 260]

President Jiang Zemin who refers to foreign concern with what Peking still
calls 
"the incident" or "the counter-revolutionary uprising" as "much ado about
nothing."

Sincerely, 

Jonathan Mirsky

I should add that for my reporting of what I saw in 1989 I received the
1990 British press award International Reporter of the Year.









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Please add your name to the signature drive calling for the rehabilitation
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	Hong Kong Voice of Democracy
	http://www.democracy.org.hk
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	Phone: (852) 9267 6489
	Fax  :    (852) 2791 5801
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