When the Public Square Ran Red With Blood

It has been 30 years since Chinese troops slaughtered Lord knows how many Chinese peaceful demonstrators who had the nerve to express their desire for liberty rather than perpetual rule by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) thugs. China would rather memory hole the whole episode.

"Tank man" defying the PLA, prior to the slaughter.

It has been thirty years since Tiananmen Square:

The CCP's revivalist narrators, however, utterly avoid mentioning the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre of Chinese citizens by the People's Liberation Army, to the point of forbidding its discussion and attempting to erase the event from history.

On that June day three decades ago, PLA soldiers entered the square, and at the order of Communist leader Deng Xiaoping, slaughtered at least 2,000 pro-reform demonstrators. The demonstrators had committed the grievous crime of challenging the party's hardline leaders by making a statue called the Goddess of Democracy, supporting reform-minded leaders and peacefully appealing for political liberalization to accompany Deng's economic modernization program.

Some sources contend the death toll greatly exceeded 2,000. Perhaps Beijing's secret police know the exact death toll. No one else does. The government immediately began to deny the June 4 slaughter.

Instead of reform, China has gotten more tyranny. And so far, the Chinese people are reacting as the CCP wants them to--with fearful submission that won't even blink over the slaughter.

One day, perhaps, their deaths won't have been in vain. The Goddess of Democracy was modeled on the Statue of Liberty, I should add. Which too many people here think is the Statue of Unrestricted Immigration.

But until their deaths can be mourned as a sacrifice that led to liberty, we should at least remember them and not let murderous thugs suppress the knowledge that they ever existed.

Of course, we should recall that even that tragedy is a rounding error in the Great Leap Forward Off a Cliff that resulted in the murder of perhaps 45 million people by China's communist rulers.

And with this willingness to kill in mind, perhaps Taiwan could get a little sense of urgency in their defense efforts:

The United States is "playing with fire" with its support for self-ruled Taiwan, China said on Thursday, in angry comments ahead of a meeting between Defence Minister Wei Fenghe and acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.

Unless the Taiwanese want their squares to run red, too.

UPDATE: More on China's desire to suppress the memory, with the added complication that China's economy is under pressure.

UPDATE: The State Department issued a statement that begins:

On June 4, we honor the heroic protest movement of the Chinese people that ended on June 4, 1989, when the Chinese Communist Party leadership sent tanks into Tiananmen Square to violently repress peaceful demonstrations calling for democracy, human rights, and an end to rampant corruption. The hundreds of thousands of protesters who gathered in Beijing and in other cities around China suffered grievously in pursuit of a better future for their country. The number of dead is still unknown. We express our deep sorrow to the families still grieving their lost loved ones, including the courageous Tiananmen Mothers, who have never stopped seeking accountability, despite great personal risk. The events of thirty years ago still stir our conscience, and the conscience of freedom-loving people around the world.

Oh, the Chinese Communist Party knows how many they killed.