It is a quarter of a century since the People's Army put down China's incipient protest movement with shocking brutality. Michael Fathers, The Independent's then Asia Editor, was there. These were his dispatches from the atrocity
It will go down It will go down in the annals of China's Communist Party as The Glorious Fourth of June when the army that was founded for the people turned on the unarmed citizens of Peking to destroy a peaceful student-led democracy movement.
The killing around Tiananmen Square started soon after midnight. It was a different army from the unarmed one which had tried to enter the square on Friday night and failed. This one was told to kill, and the soldiers with their AK- 47 automatic rifles and the armoured personnel carriers with their machine guns opened fire indiscriminately, in the air, directly at the huge crowds, at small groups, everywhere.
I looked behind as I walked along the pavement on the opposite side. A squad of army goons, waving pistols, electric cattle prods and batons were running towards me. They jumped me, screamed at me, pointed a pistol at my head, beat me about the legs with their batons and dragged me across to New China Gate. Several soldiers broke ranks and ran to me, punching me, kicking me with karate leaps in the back, thighs and chest. There was pure hatred in their eyes.
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