CNN, BBC and AFP reporters accosted by umbrella-wielding "undercover" police at Beijing's Tiananmen Square [UPDATED]

防民之口，胜于防川。JC，跟梁羽生小说的朝廷YQ是一个模样...

cao ni men ma

waiguo ren quan shi shabi

do u know what is "shabi"

its u!

maozhuxi wansui

Do people really believe that unarmed students attacked ARMED SOLDIERS AND TANKS?

For those saying such ugly lies as "armies were required not to shot people" and that some people might have been killed in the "confusion" "after the people attacked the army firt", here is a (hard) slice of reality with rare pictures:

http://www.tibet-defacto.com/2009/06/04/il-y-a-20-ans-le-massacre-de-tiananmen/

The text is in french but I can summarize what is happening. The last students are leaving Tiananmen square. The manifestations have ended. When the students arrive in Chang’an avenue at the Liubukou crossroads, they see 3 tanks driving straight at them. And then, teargas. The students are trying to avoid the tanks by climbing the fences. No luck: eleven students are crushed.

Those pictures have been taken by chinese students at that time. The whole event took less than 20 minutes. We are far far away from the "army being attacked" and from the "we had no choice" stories. Those tanks needlessly killed students who were leaving calmly Tiananmen square. So what? Maybe you should ask your government if they have something else than a good bargain on umbrellas as an answer. The other picture are extraded from a propaganda comics published in July 1989. It says how heroic the army has been and that not a single person has died that day. MMmmm... Really? Let's reprint that book, it will be as useful today that it was in 1989 as we are still hearing the same stories today.

using umbrella is like putting creativity to a new level! good job!

stumbled to this site and might as well butt in. i have no firm knowledge of how many students or soldiers were killed. don't know if the figures being bandied about in CNN or other news channel can be trusted, especially after their distorted coverage of the tibet riot which really opened my eyes to the bigotry and hypocrisy prevalent in the western media...but i digress. not that i trust Xinghua either. bits of shame that similar incidents in here the freedom land are hardly treated the same by the media. most of them never received major media coverage or much commemoration...maybe i missed it but has anyone seen CNN, Fox or what have you, flogging the U.S. gov./police for the Orangeburg massacre, Jackson State killings, Kent State shootings, where is the candle vigil for those who died at their government's hands. so much for freedom of press...

I think you should refund that fifty cent.

Try google next time. It will be better for your casual interest than going through a registration process and logging into a site.

Kent State : http://dept.kent.edu/May4/

Orangeburg: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/644.html

Jackson State: http://cdm.lib.usm.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/jsu&CISOPTR=81&CISOBOX=1&REC=3

exactly my point, the archaic links about the U.S. gov. massacre whose commenmeration never made a blip on CNN/Fox's radar pale in comparison to the media hype about tiananmen square...of course one can only assume that the western media is so supportive of the chinese people that they will keeping looking for imperfections everywhere...except within that is.

Exactly my point, chief, you should refund that 50 cent X 2 now. Links all top five on google search -- all three -- and not one of them was in DC nor on Capitol Hill. Try it. Yeah, Kent State's website is pretty obscure for a massacre that occurred there.

Explain "never made a blip." I'd appreciate it, since I learned about these in US history class in 6th grade, chief. And, well, the body count is 1-3 orders of magnitude different. Look up "order of magnitude" if that's not clear. URL = www.google.com type "define: order of magnitude"

Distraction...

so you think the crushing of the anti-war/segregation crowd by the U.S. government is less preposterous because of your glancing familarity with it? i trust you are not too blind or idiotic to recognize a blip on the news outlet so google away i am not gonna do your homework, unless you want me to distract you further to look over your own gov.'s screwups. judge not lest ye be judged. the U.S. of A isn't exactly pro-freedom untill after a few massacres of its own citizens, conditional upon some more genocides and crapping on unlucky regimes around the world.

now take your tired distraction gambit and shove it.

I guess you were mistaken when you registered and then logged onto this website thinking it was about civil rights in the US.

This is the most funny video this weekend.

Lin said: it is weird that a non-Chinese website have a name looks like something related with Shanghai a Chinese city.

Lin: You had to go through an English language registration process to ask us that...

好奇怪哦~明明是外文网站，为啥取个这么中国化的域名啊~

好好玩~这和上海有啥关系吗？

I am a chinese college student, I am so ashamed. I was on the square that day in a white T-shirt. Plain clothes outnumbered the visitors. The atmosphere was so depressive and made me so uncomfortable.

I think that mmmmmmm is one of the so called "Internet Commentators", they are payed by government to "comment" and say bullshit. I also ashamed of them.

It is said that each post is payed RMB 0.5 yuan or 0.07 cents so we call them 5 mao party(五毛党）.

guys,we gotta shit goverment and a shit party but it's still a nice country with good people living in there....

yuanjiangni, I agree wholeheartedly. And I think that's something that everyone on this site can agree with (excluding the more "colorful" commenters like nanheygrouchan).

This is about as close to a consensus as Shanghaiist will ever get, so let's enjoy it while it lasts, eh?

I feel shameful on government's intensive reaction these says. But you foreign reports, could you pls ascertain the real facts before you comment other countries' business???

I'm a Beijinger and one of my family member was shot by solders 20 years ago. He was not an university student and he might be one of the victims talking about by you guys. But you know what he did at that day??? He was agitated by people with ulterior motives and went to the TIANANMEN square for nothing but kicking up a row. He was just a kid at that time and he did that just for fun... Can you imagine how many people like my relatives are there among these students?

My english is not good, so I didn't want to comment about this. But I can't bear people who know nothing or not enough truth criticize our government. Though the internet censorship and the HEXIE are terrible and ridiculous and government's attitude toward press should be changed, our government shouldn't be blame for that event 20 years ago, at least not so much.

That's my point. You guys should listen to people who live in China but not these have been abroad for dozens years!

Annetiti, your English is great, you have nothing to worry about. :-) You're right that foreigners should try to ascertain the facts before commenting. But how are we supposed to do this when the CCP controls access to those facts as tightly as they do, as you mentioned in your comment? Ascertaining the facts would be much easier today if the international networks that were covering the protests in 1989 weren't ordered to terminate broadcasts from the city during the crackdown, or if the government hadn't shut down the satellite transmissions. (source- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989#International_reaction)

I respect your opinion about not blaming the CCP; you sound like a rational person and Shanghaiist could use more commenters like you. But ask yourself how you arrived at your opinions. If you did so based solely on information from official sources like Xinhua, you should probably question the impartiality of that information. If most of the rest of the world (consisting of both China's friends and foes) has one version of the events of June 4, and the only people touting a different version are members of the CCP (who stand to lose the most from the first version), which version is more credible?

In any country, it's important to get your news from a variety of sources (both foreign and domestic), in order to limit the effects of journalistic bias and self-censorship. In country like China, where censorship is widespread, that's even more true.

both of them are children

I'm a student from Beijing and there are some comments I want to make.

Firstly, about June 4th. I won't deny all the evil things CCP has done. but, i still want to remind those who are not so happy with CCP that what you learned from any sources could only be part of the truth. everyone can only have part of it. no one can see the whole truth...well, except God.

and here is my part of the truth from what I heard from some elder people: armies were required not to shot people. those soldiers were pointing their guns to the sky. it was the people who attacked the army first and a lot of soldiers were killed too. surely a lot of innocent civilians died in that confusion.

secondly, about press. i believe no one will buy everything what the press say. but the truth is, it is the press who shapes your (and my) national opinion. the question remains: do you want your mind to be shaped by the national opinion?

i'm totally agree that china should have more freedom of speech. but when the whole world starts to talk about it, i kind of agree with what the government did: block everything. another turmoil (no matter it means for good or bad) in beijing? no, thanks. we've had enough. just go ahead blocking everything. I'd rather stay in my dorm undisdurbed doing my papers when the whole world keeps talking.

see? it's the candid righteous western press and always-right-human-rights-fighters who are so concerned with it. not Chinese(well, some of them do, though). not us. we are busy with our own bussinese...

I'm not saying we should forget what happened. never. what happened will forever be remembered.

we will still remember it when the world forgets. and we will reflect upon everything when the world shuts up.

mmmmmmmm- if you don't want to be disturbed by chat about this issue, why did you log onto this website and leave a comment on this post?

We reflect and form an opinion based on what we read, see and hear (where did you read about the soldiers pointing their guns to the sky by the way?).

Blocking viewpoints can never lead to clearer vision.

Can't believe it here I was waiting all day for BBS and Leastman to bite and I land two of them in one go. Too easy boys, too easy. Now as El Jefe said please defend the the above childish actions in Tianiman using a little intelligence rather than your cut and paste jobs BBC, or your limited communication skills Eastman. You are all after all hired to defend a goverment cover up aren't you and as such your both not doing your jobs properly.

The Bass master sets his bait and waits.....

Were it be me I'll use my own face lol.

CNN had a good record... Like mistaken drama costume with monk robes.

Glad to be part of the enemy of the world. Dare the world stop doing business with it's common enemy?

I just read about this on a blog in DC.

http://muckbreaker.blogspot.com

You know what the funniest part of all this is? The PRC's government doesn't realize that, by sending out the umbrella brigades, it actually augmented the newsworthiness of the very story it was trying to trivialize. Its strategy should have been to draw as little attention to itself and June 4 as possible, and not to give the media any new angle to report besides what it already had.

A truly strong society is one that welcomes divergent viewpoints, and sees constructive and vigorous debate as a chance to perform a searching and fearless inventory of the weaknesses in one's own opinions in order to rectify those weaknesses. But the current regime perceives differing opinions as a threat to be suppressed, a classic sign of insecurity and a weakness shared by all authoritarian systems. Like a man with a toothache who doesn't go to the dentist because he's afraid to learn he has cavities, it refuses to accept the situation in which it finds itself. But the man's cavities will still be there, whether or not he acknowledges them, just as those with opposing viewpoints will continue to make themselves heard, one way or another.

Distraction, distortion, derision. I dare you to write something that doesn't use any of these.

It's really too bad that the PLA didn't use umbrellas in Tiananmen Square 20 years ago today instead of the tanks and guns they used to massacre hundreds of people.

A government that is so insecure that they have to block websites, censor papers and obstruct journalists out of a fear that their own citizens will learn the truth is a pathetic excuse for a government.

I meant "not block", typo.

he will be punished for being able to block the whole shot, mission failed, try another job young man.

he will be punished for being able to block the whole shot, mission failed, try another job young man.

What a pile of shit country, and so many of you westerners still look at it through rose colored lenses. The Chinese gov't is the enemy of man.

Well judging by the Chinglish cutting and pasting and the stirling work done at Tianamen today BBC and Leastman are well on thier way to having a KFC dinner. Enjoy the fruits of capatlism boys, you've earned it. Lets see if they bite.

You'd be surprised at how well I can improve my chinglish with my ad-hominem though. And the better I get, the more I get paid from the boss!

--"Oh, you're either hired or your Chinglish is so bad", yee-yee-yee!

what typical attitude of a online loser who, as a last fattie idiot in class, doesnt know what to say. Why should I speak good english while I know CHina better, though it's an english blog here but about china?

you know what? When I studied Chinese in Beijing Uni in 1979, you were still 5cc liquid between your elder brother's legs.

BBC1 and Eastman -- 5 kuai umbrella holders.

Hey dude, I don't work for wu kuai, LOL!!! And I never eat American junkfood in KFC. French Foie Gras is OK though. LOL! Hey Chai Ling, getting a good bang? Your boss husband giving you enuff dough to buy more LV bags. eh? And Wang Dan, how much money did you get from the DPP to speak in their event?

i bet the umbrellas person is thinking : man this job sucks, its fuckin hot out here, but its better than the disneyland job i had last year. being minnie sucks. at least i am doing something good for my country this time around.

My Mum did the exact same move on a camera from Yorkshire TV once. Long story, but a true story

Didn't Chai Ling ditched her husband, got a double eyelid op, and married a rich White Caucasian? LOL!

This is a sweet move. It also works when people are hassling you buy watch bag DVD

@ Least man

You get paid to write this? If I was a Chinese tax payer i'd protest at the squandering of state funds on your education and government job.

I get paid to write this?

Will a "lying government" pay to tell a truth, a truth that it is today the 20 anniversary of her faked story of "row of row, hundreds and hundreds of students were mawed down by machine guns IN tiananmen square"?

Boy you are in a logical knot, since man only get paid to tell lie, like you were doing. I just wonder how much and by who, National Endowment the pack of ididot whome only you type on bandwagon admire? lol!

Yes am hired by National Endowment and get paid handsome so what! one day our crusader will go liberate China as we did to Iraq. Prepare your open arms!

Man you know tit for tat?

student leader Chai Ling should come today for an on-spot interview by CNN, as it is 20 anniversary of her honest and heroic statement in tears:

---"row of row, hundreds and hundreds of students were mawed down by machine guns IN tiananmen square..."

i wish the ex-commander-in-chief's business is booming daily.

Sooooo children thwarted John Vause eh? I wonder if his ego is gonna explode like in Lebanon, a must watch...

They really are children, aren't they?