Slide Show: Tiananmen Square, 1989
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on June 2nd, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
Slide Show: Tiananmen Square, 1989
In the spring of 1989, pro-democracy protests developed in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where students and others called for government accountability and the freedom of the press, among other popular causes. Overnight on June 3rd and 4th—twenty-five years ago this Wednesday—the government enforced martial law, staging a bloody dispersal of the demonstrations that killed between five hundred and twenty-five hundred people and initiated a new era of conservatism in the country. Here are photos from the protests and the crackdown.
Some two hundred thousand pro-democracy students staged an unauthorized demonstration in Tiananmen Square during the funeral ceremony of the Chinese Communist Party leader and liberal reformer Hu Yaobang, on April 22, 1989. Photograph by Catherine Henriette/AFP/Getty.
Students from Beijing University receive first-aid treatment on May 17, 1989, the fifth day of a mass pro-democracy hunger strike. Photograph by Catherine Henriette/AFP/Getty.
A portrait of Mao Zedong is covered after being defaced with paint, on May 23, 1989. A banner on the bottom reads “This is not done by students.” Photograph by Catherine Henriette/AFP/Getty.
Pro-democracy demonstrators filled the square for weeks. Photograph by Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket/Getty.
Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. Photograph by Vincent Mentzel/Hollandse Hoogte/Redux.
Pro-democracy demonstrators overturn a bus on Changan Avenue, on June 4, 1989. Photograph by Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket/Getty.
People’s Liberation Army soldiers leap over a barrier on Tiananmen Square, on June 4, 1989. Photograph by Catherine Henriette/AFP/Getty.
June 4, 1989. Photograph by Torbjorn Andersson/Kontinent/Redux.
A fatally injured student is helped by a friend. Photograph by Torbjorn Andersson/Kontinent/Redux.
Barriers on Changan Avenue hours after the nighttime crackdown on protestors. Photograph by Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket/Getty.
An iconic photograph, June 5, 1989. Photograph by Stuart Franklin/Magnum.
