China is gonna be the wedge issue on lemmy as reddit libs join. We should really get out in front and address Uighur and Tiananmen stuff with effortposts now.
hit the character limit
make sure to read sources before sharing them.
DO NOT COPY-PASTE THIS ON LEMMY LOL, THIS IS A BRAINSTORM FOR OUR USE
We should pool our sources and evidence in this thread so that people with approved lemmy accounts can start spreading it there.
Feel free to contribute lol, it's a lot of work for me to do on my own and I might miss stuff or make mistakes, although I'm gonna keep going help or no
I'll grab links in a second (and there are some good articles I'd like to find that gather lots of evidence in one place), but here's some stuff off the top of my head:
Wikileaks published a private diplomatic cable stating that no one was killed in the square itself, although a smaller number of people did die in clashes elsewhere in Beijing, consistent with China's own official account. (Here is the cable)
A spanish film crew was in the square all night and filmed crowds of people walking out of the square in the early morning, singing the Internationale. Two wounded people are shown among them, possibly people who had been brought to the red cross station in the square, but no gunshots are heard, no one is running, and there are no bodies. (courtesy of /u/robinn, here's footage of a Hong Kong news report that includes the spanish film crew footage)
toward the end protest signs were suddenly in English
tank man: the guy survives and is led away by bystanders, and also the tanks in the video are leaving the square (you can see this in the uncropped footage) and it is broad daylight, whereas the main violence occurred at night (also, courtesy of /u/robinn again: China in 1989 for one man vs. the U.S. in 2020 for a whole crowd and courtesy of /u/LegaliiizeIt, another video in the same vein)
online photos of corpses were visibly taken elsewhere, not the square
the violence against troops was uncharacteristic of the previous tone of interactions between troops and protesters in the preceding weeks. Troops and protesters had peacefully coexisted, singing songs and sharing food together. (Here's an article that goes into it a bit — again, be warned that this site hosts some crank articles, so you might want to focus on the sources)
I don't really have much off the top of my head for Uighur genocide stuff
libs should hear who Zens is
even the US State Department and the UN concede there is no mass killing in Xinjiang.
western intelligence has been stoking and funding islamic extremism in Xinjiang. There's that talk by some American general or colonel where he acknowledges this, and I think there are other sources online as well
/u/Awoo suggests keeping things short and digestible instead of posting long effortposts, since libs will just count on people not reading the whole thing and they will point at it and say "See? They deny the Uighur genocide" or "See, they deny Tiananmen" https://hexbear.net/post/271448/comment/3514089
No one died in the square itself. People did die in violent clashes elsewhere in the city, probably around 200 or so, mainly civilians but also troops. The first attacks were two days earlier, and were committed against troops. Multiple unarmed soldiers were burned alive and their corpses strung up from nooses. Other soldiers were beaten and lynched. Vehicles were molotov'd with people inside them.
Very important point: the immolated and hanged soldiers were killed before the crackdown. The fires were the first serious attack and informed the rest of the event (throwing rocks at helmeted troops is whatever).
It's worth looking at some of the links, even if it's just the videos or something. Student leader Chai Ling's testimony about seeking to have some of her followers killed by the PLA is very informative.