Bob Inglis: “In May of 1989, students began a protest for democratic reforms in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Their movement began…”

“In May of 1989, students began a protest for democratic reforms in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Their movement began modestly, then swelled to thousands as they occupied the square in what they saw as a people's movement. From the flat stone of the square they erected a 10-foot-tall likeness of the world's most recognizable symbol of freedom, the Statue of Liberty. Threatened, divided, Beijing's hard-line leaders invoked martial law and ordered the army to the square. Huge throngs, possibly amounting to more than 1 million Chinese, took to the streets to defy martial law and block troops from their planned crackdown on China's young freedom fighters. The world saw gripping pictures of an unarmed man refusing to give way to an approaching tank. ``With the people behind us, we'll succeed,'' one student told a reporter. ``No government can survive by using the Army against its own citizens.'' Tragically, he was wrong. The New York Times reported the following scene on June 4, 1989: Tens of thousands of Chinese troops retook the center of the capital early this morning from pro-democracy protesters, killing scores of students and workers and wounding hundreds more as they fired submachine guns at crowds of people who tried to resist. The hard-line leaders gave personal attention to the students' Statue of Liberty. ``Push it down,'' they ordered.”