June 5: An unknown and brave nicknamed "Tank Man" managed to stop the advance of a column of Chinese tanks on June 5, 1989, in Tiananmen Square in Peking (Beijing).

Tanks in Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989

The pictures show the moment that was established as one of the most important icons of the twentieth century. The "Unknown Rebel" managed to hit the world press through videos and photographs taken during the incident. It was shameful! The massacre started the day before, on june 4th.

The "Tank Man" temporarily stops the advance of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, in Beijing, in what is widely considered among the most iconic images of the 20th century

The Chinese communist government wanted to break up a student demonstration by force.

The winning photo of the World Press Photo award of a protester interposing sent tanks to dissolve the demonstration on June 5, 1989 in China.

 The students called for political transparency and democratic changes to modernize China, trying to copy the liberalizing policies of the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), when President Gorbachev spoke of transparency and reengineering (Glasnost and Perestroika), which eventually led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union two years later.

Student slaughter began on June 4, when the military fired on unarmed students, and caused hundreds of deaths, because the students did not want to vacate the square. 

That was an example of the brutality exercised by dictatorships and violent Marxist ideas imploring the class struggle.

The political cost for China has been enormous. It hardly got in the World Trade Organization for that incident. They had to create one country with two systems: Market Economy in the West and the Maoist communism in the rest of the peasant country.

Añadir leyenda