n*******r 发帖数: 2010 | 1 英文的。 虽然是中国人都知道的事实, 敢说真话的英文媒体人不多了。
by Terry Irving
I was one of the producers editing in Hong Kong for Ted Koppel's Special
Report on Tiananmen Square that aired a month after the event occurred.
Nightline had sent 4 China experts to observe the events of June 4th from
the Square in that chaotic evening. We also hired a number of smart bi-
lingual college-age students who had lived in Beijing for years to help with
translation and with clarifying what was really going on. (The worst part
of reporting on foreign events is the knowledge that you don't have the
depth of experience to place facts into perspective. It's a lot like
watching programs on the BBC where people's accents are telling British
viewers a completely different story that Americans miss completely.)
My primary job was to edit the lead piece--a 10 minute recap of the events
of the night when the People's Liberation Army cleared the Square. I
collected every videotape we had from the Square, ordered them by time as
recorded in timecode, and then mapped out the location of each camera at the
time the picture was taken. Then we screened every tape over and over. One
of the great advantages was that I always had one of the students with me
to tell me what was really happening.
This really helped me avoid some common media errors. There is a famous shot
of several men carrying a badly injured man through the crowd. Virtually
every news network has used this shot as depicting a wounded student. It is
actually a wounded soldier being evacuated by students.
The most important fact that the kids who were working with me explained was
the difference between the students (generally seen with headbands on,
trying to calm things down, and get events under some control) and people
that they described as "street toughs." I was told that these were the sort
of minor criminal who would loiter in the Square to make currency exchanges,
sell cigarette, and generally commit petty crimes. (We've got plenty of
them in the US, just look at Times Square before it was Disneyfied.)
On the other hand, students, particularly in Beijing, were in many cases the
sons and daughters of Party officials. Certainly these were not people that
any People's Army officer with a brain would have shot or wounded.
Without exception, the violence that we found was committed by or on these
street toughs and not by or on students. The worst fighting apparently
occurred as the Army was making its way to the Square and there were no
Western cameras to record this. Soldiers were attacked and killed--one even
burnt on a road overpass--and military units fired to clear the way. From
what I know, students were not involved in these confrontations, they appear
to have been between an angry urban lower class and the military. This
doesn't make it right, I'm only trying to differentiate between students and
other demonstrators.
Late at night, when the Square had been cleared and the approaching avenues
sprayed with machine gunfire to prevent any more people from reaching the
Square, we could hear the loudspeaker announcement that all should clear the
area. After that, the lights went out for a time. Many news outlets in the
West claimed that at this point, tanks ran over students who refused to
abandon their protest.
This was one of the primary facts I was attempting to establish. There were
tantalizing video clips of military vehicles crushing tents and pulling down
the iconic Statue of Democracy but no pictures and no credible reporting of
violence. In the end, I was informed that the only news crew that remained
in the Square overnight was from Spain and we searched for their tape for
days--finally locating it in Madrid.
This video shows dozens, possibly hundreds, of students walking in a long
line holding hands and being watched by soldiers. As the sun rose, these
students entered the University. There was no mistreatment of the students
by the Army.
So, in the end, my conclusions:
1. It's almost certain that no students were killed in Tienanmen Square on
the night of June 4th.
2. In most cases, at least early in the night, the soldiers in the square
were unarmed recent recruits who were lectured at by students and pushed
around by street thugs.
3. Soldiers were injured and possibly killed in a firebomb attack by non-
students on the second personnel carrier to enter the square. Injured
soldiers were evacuated by students.
4. There were clearly serious casualties as the Army columns made their way
to the Square. I didn't have any pictures of this but reports of injuries
and deaths on the access roads are credible. There are no credible reports
of students being involved in these events.
5. I couldn't locate any credible reports of deaths in the clearing of the
Square; only rumors and suppositions of "what must have happened." I had
visual proof that the great majority, if not in fact all, students left at
dawn.
In the end, my conclusion was that no students died in Tienanmen Square.
Non-students could well have died in the Square and certainly died in the
streets outside the Square. It was a massacre of civilians by their own
government and an outrage committed by a dictatorship against protesting
citizens. On the other hand, these protesters were definitely violent in at
least some of their protests at at least some locations.
That's what we reported in "Tiananmen Square: The Untold Story" but I agree
with XinXin Sun that by far the majority of the Western media reported an
inaccurate story that painted an incorrect and simplistic narrative over an
extremely complex and nuanced reality.
June 4th, 1989 was a regrettable event--a repressive backlash by an
oligarchic government. However, it also resulted in the government allowing
the people of China to create a capitalist economy that is rivaling the West
, enjoy lives with less restrictions, and see at least a limited relaxation
of government control over speech and protest. | I******I 发帖数: 14241 | | l******t 发帖数: 55733 | |
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