Tiananem_Square

Matthew Borne The reports on the riot at Tiananmen Square each vary dramatically from each other. Some are pure facts, others colored by pure opinion, or reviews of personal accounts, or blurred by political persuasion. Based on my reading, the issues at stake are, The slaughter of innocent citizens, lying to the nations citizens, the differences in political views, and the dramatic differences in the number of people killed. The lie is apparent from the quote by General Li Zhiyun,"It never happened that soldiers fired directly at the people." If that were true then who were the soldiers firingat, that the citizens got in the way' In more then statment it was said that tanks had ran over civilians and protestors, and in the eyewitness statment he claims that soldiers were purposely shooting down people and slaughtering citizens. None of the reports could agree upon the number of people dead. One's beliefs will color any issue. A good example is in the statment of Chairman of the Central Military commision, who described rioters as "bad people" because of their political views. Also the statments from eyewitnesses might be colored to view the soldiers as the "bad guys". Because of the overall situation and the differences in political ideals to that of the government. There are two issues which seem to provoke the most disagreement. The first being the most obvious, you have two groups of people one group loves the current government, the other wants a change. The second issue being wheather or not the soldiers were correct in the way they handled the situation. There are a few questions that need to answered such as did the rioters provoke such harsh reactions from the military' and was there any history of the "rebellion" being violent'