Jan Wong
Globe and Mail Beijing correspondent.
… I was really afraid the students would get massacred, but they weren't. They gathered them, and … then they forced them to go out through a gauntlet, literally a gauntlet, where they hit them as they left. Then the students filed out through the south end past Chairman Mao's mausoleum; they turned right at Kentucky Fried Chicken; then they went back north to the Boulevard of Eternal Peace [Chang'an Boulevard]. Then just at that intersection, when they arrived at the Boulevard of Eternal Peace, some students swore at the tanks who were waiting, and the tanks turned on their motors and crushed about 10 or 11 students. This is about 6:00 a.m., so it's daylight because it's June, so everyone can see this. …
That day, of course, when the sun came up, everybody was really angry. Remember, the whole city heard it. Ten million people heard the army coming in, and they heard the sirens, and they heard all the screaming and shooting. So they gathered at the corner, and about 50 or 60 or 80 people cursed the soldiers who were now guarding the square. … You could see the commander give an order, because suddenly all the rifles would come up. There would be one row of soldiers kneeling, one row standing. It was like a shooting range. Then all the people realized that the guns were pointed at them, and they'd go running past the hotel. I felt like I was watching some terrible opera: The people [would] go running past the hotel, and then the soldiers would fire in their backs. They would fall right in front of the hotel. Maybe five or six people would be shot. And then, unlike the night before, when you could rescue them, if you tried to approach them, they would shoot. They would shoot anyone who tried to help those people, so they would just be lying in the square. … The soldiers shot everybody -- doctors, nurses, anybody, rescuers. Just everybody was being shot at. …
But the odd thing was that after a little while, like 40 minutes, an hour, people would gather their nerve again and crawl back to the corner and start screaming at the soldiers. … The commander would eventually give another signal, and the soldiers would raise their rifles again, and the people go, "Oh, my God!," and they would run away, and they'd shoot more in the backs. This went on more than half a dozen times in the day. It was to me unbelievable that I'm just watching it and counting the bodies. … I just can't believe it.
The only reason they left is it started to rain around late afternoon, a nice, gentle drizzle, and everybody went home. I thought, such a strange country -- they're not afraid of dying, but they don't want to get wet. So that was the end of that. …
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發表於 2011-6-3 15:11
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