The Massacre at Tiananmen Square

It was a bloody massacre. The Massacre of Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, China, that is. It was boycott against the government. The people wanted freedom. They wanted democracy. They wanted to know why Hu Yaobang was dismissed in January 1987 (NMIS.org Chronology Page 1). They were angry that students who wanted to know why he was dismissed were arrested (Inside China Today, Part One).All these facts were reasons for the Massacre of Tiananmen Square, in which, according to China's Red Cross, two thousand six hundred people were killed, and 7,000 were wounded (Inside China Today, Part Five). The question is: did the government have the right to use force to stop the protest? The answer is yes because the people were warned, and were trying to change something that would be very hard to change.

Tiananmen Square was a place of protest in April, May, and June of 1989 (NMIS.org). Students from Beijing University, as well as many other schools, were boycotting against the government. They would protest at Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen Square is one of the largest public squares in the world, which has an area of over one hundred acres (Encyclopedia Britannica). In this large area, massive amounts of brutalities took place. Large tanks crushed eleven students, and many other students were shot and killed.

The people were warned to stay away from Tiananmen Square. Specifically, on June 3rd, at 10:00 P.M., the loudspeakers at Tiananmen Square cautioned the students to stay at home (Inside China Today, Part Five). Also, if that didn't warn the people enough, the fact that so many people were dying should have told them that it just wasn't worth it.

One of the main reasons for all of the protests is because of communism. The students did not want communism, but would rather have a democracy. This is not the way to fix communism. It would have been easier to gather up all of these students and take them to the leader to see if he can change his ways. When the people go on protest, they get their point across. Especially if there are that many. They don't have to take it so far that the government has to use force to stop them. Either way, they got their point across, but they would have got their point across in a non-violent way.

The government had only one choice to stop the protest at Tiananmen Square: by force. They tried to negotiate, but that didn't work. They enforced martial law, but that was a joke to the people (Inside China Today, Part Three). The people were warned. They shouldn't have kept protesting. Also, they were trying to change something that would be very hard to change. For sure there were other people who favored communism who would have went on strike if it changed to a democracy, which would pretty much be impossible anyway.