Aletho News

The Tiananmen “Massacre”?

The Unrelenting Monopoly Media Agenda

By Wei Ling Chua | Dissident Voice | May 17, 2017

When we search the internet for ‘Tiananmen Square Massacre’, there are hundreds of thousands of hyperlinks to books, news, articles, and videos that describe the event as a “Massacre”; and even the reputable Encyclopaedia Britannica also cites the Western media as sources to describe the 1989 incident as a “Massacre”.

This is despite the fact that, in 1998, Washington Post journalist Jay Mathews reported in the Columbia Journalism Review that “no one died at Tiananmen Square” and that “it is hard to find a journalist who has not contributed to the misimpression”.

In 2004, the Christian Science Monitor revealed that Human Rights Watch decided not to publish their 52-page eye-witness report that confirmed the Chinese side of the story. In 2009, BBC journalist James Miles admitted that he had “conveyed the wrong impression.” CBS journalist Richard Roth also stated in 2009:

“we saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel – in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a ‘massacre’ had recently occurred in that place,” however, Roth continues: “after a debrief[ing] on-air by Dan Rather (London office), I made an effort to avoid using the word ‘massacre’”, and acknowledged that he did not “make a point trying to contradict a colleague on the air.”

Are you aware of the circumstances under which these journalists suddenly decided to admit their years of contribution to the “misimpression”? Are you aware that they then tried to change the story from a Tiananmen Massacre” to a “Beijing Massacre” with the odd exception, such as Graham Earnshaw – a Reuters journalist in whose personal memoirs there was not a single word suggesting that he had witnessed any killing by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) inside or outside Tiananmen Square? As a matter of fact, after witnessing how the PLA took control of Tiananmen Square without injuring anyone, Earnshaw left the Square and walked to one of the alleys where he witnessed how a PLA commander dispersed a crowd. This is a direct quote from Earnshaw’s memoirs:

A PLA commander shouts at the crowd to disperse and warns that his troops will fire if people didn’t go. Still, people hold their ground. The troops lift their rifles and fire above the heads of the crowd.

In fact, there is ample silent evidence in the images produced by the Western media that tells the story of a highly restrained Chinese government facing a protest of a similar nature to ones in the West at that particular stage of economic development. My book, Tiananmen Square “Massacre”? The Power of Words v Silent Evidence (2014; see review) compares dozens of images (silent evidence) from the Western media to their corresponding captions to explain how the power of language can easily overpower the silent evidence that tells the opposite story.

The Western media also lied about the protesters’ desire for a Western-style democracy. The Financial Times journalist James Kynge wrote in 2009 that:

People say journalism is merely a first, rough draft of history. But the problem here is that this draft appears to have been canonised, passing largely unedited into popular conscience. I do question, however, the Western media’s basic assertion that the demonstrations had been “pro-democracy”. Even now, a raft of editorials commemorating the event’s 20th anniversary repeats the mantra that the students were “demanding democracy”.

Former Australian China Desk officer Gregory Clark wrote in the Japan Times (2008) complaining about how none of the media from the USA, the UK, and Australia, including “the New York Times, the usually impartial Guardian and Independent, and the Sydney Morning Herald, are interested in publishing rebuttals.”

The irony is that, after decades of portraying the protesters as unarmed and peaceful, the Guardian decided in 2009 to publish for the first time images of violence against the Chinese military outside Tiananmen Square but using the word “violence” in an ambiguous manner.

Here is an example of how BBC manufactured the perception of a “massacre” without showing their viewers a single clip of a dead person.

In fact, there is further evidence from the work of historians, the WikiLeaks release of U.S. embassy cables, and the National Security Archive’s declassified history, all pointing to the accuracy of the Chinese official story. Unfortunately, to this day, the event is still described by many as a “massacre”.

Given the massive evidence of U.S. false flags and western media stenography of such events — e.g., the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana, the phantom missiles in the Tonkin Gulf, the phantom WMDs in Iraq, and the crude manipulation of gas attacks in Syria to frame the Syrian government — what credibility do western governments and the western monopoly media have? Given that this writer has presented western media recantations and reporting that is contrary to the prevalent monopoly media narrative on what occurred in Tiananmen Square, one must consider what is revealed by the fact that the China-demonizing narrative persists in the West.

Wei Ling Chua is an accredited INS and ANFS Freelance Journalist. He is also the author of Tiananmen Square ‘Massacre’? and Democracy: What the west can learn from China. He can be reached at: wchua62@gmail.com. Twitter: OcastJournalist. Visit Wei Ling’s website.

May 18, 2017 - Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | China, Tiananmen Square Massacre