Monday, July 21, 2008
Birth of a massacre myth
With the Beijing Olympics looming we see more attempts to remind the world about an alleged June 4, 1989, massacre of innocent students in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The New York Times, which did so much to spread the original story of troops shooting student protesters there with abandon, has published several more massacre articles recently, including one suggesting there should be an Olympic walkout. Other media, including the usually impartial UK Guardian and Independent, and Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, have chimed in. None are interested in publishing rebuttals.
This effort is impressive, especially considering the overwhelming evidence that there was no Tiananmen Square massacre. A recent book by Madrid’s ambassador to Beijing at the time, Eugenio Bregolat, notes that Spain’s TVE channel had a television crew in the Square at the time and if there had been a massacre they would have been the first to see it and record it. He points out angrily that most of the reports of an alleged massacre were made by journalists hunkered down in the safe haven of the Beijing Hotel, some distance from the Square.
Then there is Graham Earnshaw, a down-to-earth Reuters correspondent who spent the night of June 3-4 at the alleged site of the massacre - the iconic monument at the centre of Tiananmen Square - interviewing students in detail until the troops finally arrived in the early dawn. As he writes in his memoirs ‘I was probably the only foreigner who saw the clearing of the square from the square itself.’ He confirms that most of the students there had already left peacefully much earlier and that the remaining few hundred were persuaded by the troops to do likewise.
His account is confirmed by Xiaoping Li, a former China dissident, now resident in Canada, writing recently in Asia Sentinal and quoting Taiwan-born Hou Dejian who had been on the hunger strike on the Square to show solidarity with the students:
“Some people said that 200 died in the Square and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say that I did not see any of that. I myself was in the Square until 6:30 in the morning.”
“I kept thinking,” he continued, “Are we going to use lies to attack an enemy who lies?”
True, much that happened elsewhere in Beijing that night was ugly. The regime had allowed the pro-democracy student demonstrators to occupy its historic Tiananmen Square for almost three weeks, despite the harm and inconvenience caused. Twice senior members of Deng Xiaoping’s regime had tried unsuccessfully to negotiate compromises with the students. Unarmed troops sent in to clear the Square had been turned back by angry pro-student crowds.
Finally armed troops were sent in. They too met similar hostile crowds but this time they kept advancing. Dozens of buses and troop-carrying vehicles were torched by the crowds, some with their crews trapped inside. In the panicky fighting after hundreds, maybe even thousands, of civilians and students were killed. But that was a riot, not a deliberate massacre. And it did not happen in Tiananmen Square.
So why all the reports of a ‘massacre?’ In a well researched 1998 article in the Columbia Journalism Review entitled ‘Reporting The Myth of Tiananmen, and the Price of a Passive Press,’ former Washington Post bureau chief in Beijing, Jay Mathews, tracks down what he calls ‘the dramatic accounts that buttressed the myth of a student massacre.’ He notes a widely disseminated piece by an alleged Chinese university student writing in the Hong Kong press immediately after the incident, describing machine guns mowing down students in front of the Square monument (somehow Reuter’s Earnshaw chatting quietly with the students in front of the same monument failed to notice this). Mathews adds: ‘The New York Times gave this version prominent display on June 12, just a week after the event, but no evidence was ever found to confirm the account or verify the existence of the alleged witness.’ And for good reason I suspect; the mystery report was very likely the work of the US and UK black information authorities ever keen to plant anti-Beijing stories in unsuspecting media.
Mathews adds that Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, who had been in Beijing at the time, challenged the report the next day but his article was buried on an inside page and so ‘the myth lived on.’ (The Times tradition of ignoring anything that contradicts its favorite myth also lives on. I once tried in vain to rebut a 2004 anti-Beijing piece by Times opinion page writer, David Brooks, claiming blandly and baldly that 3,000 students were massacred in the Square.)
Another key source for the original massacre myth, Mathews says, was the student leader Wu’er Kaixi who claimed to have seen 200 students cut down by gunfire in the Square. But, he notes, ‘ it was later proven that he left the square several hours before the events he described.’ He also lists an inaccurate BBC massacre report, filed from that out-of-sight Beijing Hotel.
The irony in all this, as Mathews points out, was that everyone, including himself, missed the real story. This was not the treatment of the students, who towards the end of their sit-in had deliberately courted trouble. The real story, as Earnshaw also notes, was the uprising of the civilian masses against a regime whose grey hand of corruption, oppression and incompetence ever since the Cultural Revolution days of the late sixties had reduced an entire population to simmering resentment. It was the concern over this proletarian rebellion rather than hatred of student calls for democracy that explains the ruthlessness of the regime’s subsequent crackdown on alleged perpetrators.
I can confirm some of this, having visited China frequently since the early seventies. Despite having organized single-handedly over Canberra’s opposition an Australia table tennis team to join the all-important pingpong diplomacy I too suffered harassment from bloody-minded, single-track authorities. Meanwhile one had only to walk around the backstreets, in Shanghai especially, to feel the palpably sulfurous mood of the frustrated masses.
But that was China then. Today we have a very different China, and one far too important to be subjected to black information massacre myths, particularly since the world seems very happy to forget the very public massacres of students that have occurred elsewhere - Mexico in 1968 and Thailand in 1973, for starters. There we saw no attempt by the authorities to negotiate problems. The troops moved in immediately. Hundreds died.
Photos have helped sustain the Tiananmen massacre myth. One showing a solitary student halting a row of army tanks is supposed to demonstrate student bravery in the face of military evil. In fact it shows that at least one military unit showed restraint in the face of student provocation (reports say only one rogue unit did most of the evil that night). Photos of lines of burning troop carriers are also used, as if they prove military mayhem. In fact they prove crowd mayhem.
Meanwhile we see little photo support for the other side of the story. Earnshaw notes how a photo of a Chinese soldier strung up and burned to a crisp was withheld by Reuters. Dramatic Chinese photos of solders incinerated or hung from overpasses have yet to shown by Western media.
Photos of several dead students on a bicycle rack on the Square periphery are more convincing. But the declassified reports from the US Embassy in Beijing at the time (and which used to confirm the Earnshaw/Hou accounts of Square events; they have since been heavily censored), still carry a summary which mentions how the murder by students of a soldier trying to enter the Square had triggered violence in the Square’s periphery.
The damage from the Tiananmen myth continues. It has been used repeatedly by Western hawks to sustain a ban on Western sales of arms to Beijing, including refusing even a request for the riot control equipment that Beijing says would have prevented the 1989 violence. So next time there is a riot Beijing has to send in untrained troops again?.
Note: All sources quoted above are available on the Internet, under Tianamen.
Discuss this Article
Birth of a massacre myth
With the Beijing Olympics looming we see more attempts to remind the world about an alleged June 4, 1989, massacre of innocent students in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The New York Times, which did so much to spread the original story of troops shooting student protesters there with abandon, has published several more massacre articles recently, including one suggesting there should be an Olympic walkout. Other media, including the usually impartial UK Guardian and Independent, and Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, have chimed in. None are interested in publishing rebuttals.
This effort is impressive, especially considering the overwhelming evidence that there was no Tiananmen Square massacre. A recent book by Madrid’s ambassador to Beijing at the time, Eugenio Bregolat, notes that Spain’s TVE channel had a television crew in the Square at the time and if there had been a massacre they would have been the first to see it and record it. He points out angrily that most of the reports of an alleged massacre were made by journalists hunkered down in the safe haven of the Beijing Hotel, some distance from the Square.
Then there is Graham Earnshaw, a down-to-earth Reuters correspondent who spent the night of June 3-4 at the alleged site of the massacre - the iconic monument at the centre of Tiananmen Square - interviewing students in detail until the troops finally arrived in the early dawn. As he writes in his memoirs ‘I was probably the only foreigner who saw the clearing of the square from the square itself.’ He confirms that most of the students there had already left peacefully much earlier and that the remaining few hundred were persuaded by the troops to do likewise.
His account is confirmed by Xiaoping Li, a former China dissident, now resident in Canada, writing recently in Asia Sentinal and quoting Taiwan-born Hou Dejian who had been on the hunger strike on the Square to show solidarity with the students:
“Some people said that 200 died in the Square and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say that I did not see any of that. I myself was in the Square until 6:30 in the morning.”
“I kept thinking,” he continued, “Are we going to use lies to attack an enemy who lies?”
True, much that happened elsewhere in Beijing that night was ugly. The regime had allowed the pro-democracy student demonstrators to occupy its historic Tiananmen Square for almost three weeks, despite the harm and inconvenience caused. Twice senior members of Deng Xiaoping’s regime had tried unsuccessfully to negotiate compromises with the students. Unarmed troops sent in to clear the Square had been turned back by angry pro-student crowds.
Finally armed troops were sent in. They too met similar hostile crowds but this time they kept advancing. Dozens of buses and troop-carrying vehicles were torched by the crowds, some with their crews trapped inside. In the panicky fighting after hundreds, maybe even thousands, of civilians and students were killed. But that was a riot, not a deliberate massacre. And it did not happen in Tiananmen Square.
So why all the reports of a ‘massacre?’ In a well researched 1998 article in the Columbia Journalism Review entitled ‘Reporting The Myth of Tiananmen, and the Price of a Passive Press,’ former Washington Post bureau chief in Beijing, Jay Mathews, tracks down what he calls ‘the dramatic accounts that buttressed the myth of a student massacre.’ He notes a widely disseminated piece by an alleged Chinese university student writing in the Hong Kong press immediately after the incident, describing machine guns mowing down students in front of the Square monument (somehow Reuter’s Earnshaw chatting quietly with the students in front of the same monument failed to notice this). Mathews adds: ‘The New York Times gave this version prominent display on June 12, just a week after the event, but no evidence was ever found to confirm the account or verify the existence of the alleged witness.’ And for good reason I suspect; the mystery report was very likely the work of the US and UK black information authorities ever keen to plant anti-Beijing stories in unsuspecting media.
Mathews adds that Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, who had been in Beijing at the time, challenged the report the next day but his article was buried on an inside page and so ‘the myth lived on.’ (The Times tradition of ignoring anything that contradicts its favorite myth also lives on. I once tried in vain to rebut a 2004 anti-Beijing piece by Times opinion page writer, David Brooks, claiming blandly and baldly that 3,000 students were massacred in the Square.)
Another key source for the original massacre myth, Mathews says, was the student leader Wu’er Kaixi who claimed to have seen 200 students cut down by gunfire in the Square. But, he notes, ‘ it was later proven that he left the square several hours before the events he described.’ He also lists an inaccurate BBC massacre report, filed from that out-of-sight Beijing Hotel.
The irony in all this, as Mathews points out, was that everyone, including himself, missed the real story. This was not the treatment of the students, who towards the end of their sit-in had deliberately courted trouble. The real story, as Earnshaw also notes, was the uprising of the civilian masses against a regime whose grey hand of corruption, oppression and incompetence ever since the Cultural Revolution days of the late sixties had reduced an entire population to simmering resentment. It was the concern over this proletarian rebellion rather than hatred of student calls for democracy that explains the ruthlessness of the regime’s subsequent crackdown on alleged perpetrators.
I can confirm some of this, having visited China frequently since the early seventies. Despite having organized single-handedly over Canberra’s opposition an Australia table tennis team to join the all-important pingpong diplomacy I too suffered harassment from bloody-minded, single-track authorities. Meanwhile one had only to walk around the backstreets, in Shanghai especially, to feel the palpably sulfurous mood of the frustrated masses.
But that was China then. Today we have a very different China, and one far too important to be subjected to black information massacre myths, particularly since the world seems very happy to forget the very public massacres of students that have occurred elsewhere - Mexico in 1968 and Thailand in 1973, for starters. There we saw no attempt by the authorities to negotiate problems. The troops moved in immediately. Hundreds died.
Photos have helped sustain the Tiananmen massacre myth. One showing a solitary student halting a row of army tanks is supposed to demonstrate student bravery in the face of military evil. In fact it shows that at least one military unit showed restraint in the face of student provocation (reports say only one rogue unit did most of the evil that night). Photos of lines of burning troop carriers are also used, as if they prove military mayhem. In fact they prove crowd mayhem.
Meanwhile we see little photo support for the other side of the story. Earnshaw notes how a photo of a Chinese soldier strung up and burned to a crisp was withheld by Reuters. Dramatic Chinese photos of solders incinerated or hung from overpasses have yet to shown by Western media.
Photos of several dead students on a bicycle rack on the Square periphery are more convincing. But the declassified reports from the US Embassy in Beijing at the time (and which used to confirm the Earnshaw/Hou accounts of Square events; they have since been heavily censored), still carry a summary which mentions how the murder by students of a soldier trying to enter the Square had triggered violence in the Square’s periphery.
The damage from the Tiananmen myth continues. It has been used repeatedly by Western hawks to sustain a ban on Western sales of arms to Beijing, including refusing even a request for the riot control equipment that Beijing says would have prevented the 1989 violence. So next time there is a riot Beijing has to send in untrained troops again?.
Note: All sources quoted above are available on the Internet, under Tianamen.
Discuss this Article
虐殺神話の誕生
北京オリンピックが近づくにつれて、いわゆる”1989年6月4日北京の天安門における民主化を求める学生の虐殺”について世界の記憶を喚起しようとする動きが活発化している。
その広場で抗議行動をする学生に軍隊が思いのままに発砲したという報道の,原典を流布することに大いに貢献したニューヨークタイムズ紙は最近、オリンピックボイコットの呼びかけも含め、いわゆる虐殺を糾弾した記事をさらにいくつか掲載している。通常は偏りのない英国のガーディアン紙やインディペンデント紙、オーストラリアのシドニーモーニングヘラルド紙をふくめ、他のメディアもこれに同調している。そしていずれも、それに対する反論を載せることには関心がない。
天安門広場で虐殺がなかったことを示す圧倒的な証拠が揃っていることを思えば、この努力は相当なものだ。当時の北京駐在スペイン大使エウゲニオ・ブレゴラットの最近の本によると、スペインのTVEチャンネルはその時天安門広場にテレビカメラのチームを待機させており、もし虐殺があったならば、彼らがまず最初にそれを目撃しただろうし、記録したはずだと、と書いている。
元大使が怒りをもって指摘するのは、いわゆる虐殺の報道の大半は、広場からある程度離れた北京ホテルという安全な避難所に陣取ったジャーナリストたちが発信したものだ、ということ。
さらには、グレハム・アーンショウという手堅い報道で知られるロイター通信記者がいる。彼は6月3～4日にかけての夜をいわゆる虐殺があったといわれる場所―天安門広場の中央―で、明け方近くにようやく軍隊が広場に到着した時まで、学生たちに念入りなインタビューを続けていた。その彼も、虐殺というものを見てはいない。彼は手記に書いている：”私は、広場を片付ける作業を天安門広場の現場から見ていた、おそらく唯一の外国人だと思われる。”、と。
アーンショウが確認しているのは、ほとんどの学生は、もっとずっと早い時間に平和的に広場を立ち去っており、残っていた2～3百名も軍隊からそのようにするよう説得された、ということである。
彼のいうとおりであることは、現在カナダに住んでいる元中国人反体制活動家シャオピンリーが、広場で学生への連帯を示すためにハンストをしていた台湾生まれのホウデージアンを引用して、最近アジアセンティネル誌に書いている：“広場で200人死んだという者がいるかと思えば、2000人も死んだと主張する者もいる。また立ち去ろうとしていた学生を戦車が轢いたという話もある。でも私は正直言って、これらの話のどれ一つとして目撃していない。そして翌朝の6時半まで私は広場に居た。”
たしかに、その夜、北京の他の場所ではいろいろとひどいことが起こっている。当時の政権は、この占拠で被害を受け迷惑を蒙っていたにもかかわらず、民主化を求めるデモ学生たちがこの歴史ある天安門広場を占拠するのを、ほぼ3週間放置してきた。鄧小平政権の高官たちが2度にわたって学生たちと妥協点を探る交渉を試みたが、成功しなかった。広場を開放するために非武装の軍隊が派遣されたが、怒りをあらわにした北京市民らの群衆から反撃され押し返された。
最終的に武装軍隊が送り込まれた時、やはり怒りに燃えた群集が待ち受けていたが、軍隊は今度は引かず前進を続けた。群衆によってバスや軍隊輸送車数十台が放火され、なかには隊員が閉じ込められたままの車輌もあった。この後のパニック状態の攻防戦の中で数百人、ひょっとすると数千人の市民や学生の死者が出た可能性さえある。とはいえこれは騒乱であり、計画的な虐殺ではなかった。またこれは天安門広場で起こったことではない。だからなぜ、すべての報道がこれほどまで“虐殺”として広まったのか。
1998年コロンビアジャーナルレビュー誌の、綿密な調査に基づいた「天安門神話の報道と受動的メディアの代償」と題した記事で、当時ワシントンポスト紙の北京支局長だったジェイ・マシューズは、自身がドラマチックな経過報告と呼んだ、学生虐殺という神話を支えたそのいきさつを辿ってみせる。
彼は、事件直後あるいわゆる中国人学生が香港プレスに書いて、その後広く流布された話に注目する。それによると、広場のモニュメント前で、機関銃が学生たちをなぎ倒した。ところが、その同じモニュメント前で学生たちと膝つき合わせて語り合っていたロイターのアーンショウ記者は、なぜかこのことに気付いていない。
マシューズは続けていう：「ニューヨークタイムズ紙はこの一情報を6月12日大きく報道したが、その情報を確認する、あるいはこのいわゆる目撃者の存在を証明する証拠は見つからなかった」
それはもっともだと思われる。このミステリー報告は、つねづね反中国のストーリーを、疑うことを知らないメディアに流すことに腐心している米英のブラックインフォメーション当局のしごとである可能性が極めて強い。
マシューズはさらに、当時北京にいたタイムズ紙のニコラス・クリストフ記者が翌日にはその報道に異論を唱えようとしたが、彼の記事は内部の紙面に埋め込まれてしまい、その結果“神話が生き延びた”、とも付け加えている。私は以前に、3000人の学生が虐殺されたと軽く言い切ったニューヨークタイムズ紙のオピニオン欄記者デビッド・ブルックスの2004年の反中国的記事に反論を試みたが、徒労に終わった。
虐殺神話のもう一つの主源泉情報は、マシューズによると、学生指導者のウーフエル・カイシーで、広場での銃撃で学生200名が倒れるのを見たというものだ。だがマシューズは“彼が事件が起こったという時間の数時間前に、彼が広場を去っていることが後で確認された”と言明している。またマシューズは、不正確なBBCの虐殺リポートは現場の見えない北京ホテルから書かれていることも指摘している。
これらすべてが示している皮肉とは、マシューズの指摘によれば、彼自身を含めすべての者が本物のストーリーを見過ごした、ということである。それは学生に対する扱い云々ではない、彼らも座り込みの終りの段階では意図的に騒乱を求めていた。本物のストーリーは、アーンショウも指摘しているように、60年代末の文化大革命以来、その腐敗、抑圧、無能力ぶりで全国民の怒りを爆発寸前にまで高めていた政権に対して、一般市民大衆がいま立ち上がったということなのだ。したがって学生の民主化要求への憎しみというよりも、このプロレタリアート的反乱へのおそれが、政権当局を動かし、この後のいわゆる犯人叩き取締りをそんなにも仮借ないものにしたのだ。70年代はじめ以降、度々中国を訪れている私は、このことを確認できる。
私は、時のオーストラリア政府の反対を押し切って、独力でオーストラリアの卓球選手団をまとめ上げ、“ピンポン外交”という歴史的イベント参加にこぎつけたにもかかわらず、私もまた、意地の悪い、単細胞的な当局のハラスメントを体験した。そうした中、裏通り、とくに上海の裏通りを歩いてみると、民衆のフラストレーションがくすぶっているのが肌で感じられた。
とはいえ、それは昔の中国。今では非常にちがった中国、そしてブラックインフォメーションを受けるにはあまりに重要な中国がある。まして地球上の他の場所で起こっている非常に明らかな学生の虐殺― 68年のメキシコ、73年のタイをはじめとして― を世界が平気で忘れてしまっているときに。そのとき、問題解決のために政府当局による対話の努力は見られなかった。即、軍隊が投入された。そして数百名が死んだ。
写真もまた、天安門虐殺神話を支える役を果たしている。ある写真は、ある学生が単身で戦車の列を止めているシーンで、これは軍隊の悪に対して学生の勇敢さを協調しようと意図したものらしいが、実際は、その意味するものは、学生の挑発行為に対し、軍の少なくとも一隊は抑制心を示したことの証拠である。（一連の報告によると、その夜暴虐的行為を主として行ったのはたった一つの乱暴な隊であったという）
また、火を吐く軍隊輸送車の列の写真が、まるでそれが軍隊による破壊行為の証拠でもあるかのように使われている。だが実際にはこれらは群集の破壊行為の証拠である。一方、相手側の話を証拠立てる写真はあまり見られない。
アーンショウの指摘によると、中国人兵士が吊り上げられ、黒焦げに焼かれた写真はロイター社で差し止められた。また兵士らが焼かれ灰になっている、また陸橋から吊るされているドラマチックな中国の写真は、欧米のメディアではいまだに非公開だ。広場近くの自転車棚の上の数名の学生の死体の写真の方が、より説得力をもつのである。
その当時北京のアメリカ大使館で出された、機密扱いを解かれた報告は、アーンショウ/ホウによる広場での出来事のストーリーを裏付けるものだった（その後これらの報告は厳しくカットされてしまった）。だがそのサマリー部分はまだ残っており、サマリーは、広場に入ろうとした兵士が学生たちに殺されたことが広場周辺での騒乱に火をつけたことを、確認している。
（筆者は秋田国際教養大学副学長、元オーストラリア外務省中国デスク。）
注：上で引用された情報源はすべてインターネットのTiananmenサイトで読むことができる。