3 June 2014

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25 years on

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The Tank Man, or the Unknown Protester, is the nickname of an anonymous man who stood in front of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, the morning after the Chinese military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 by force. Some have identified the man as Wang Weilin (王維林), but the name has not been confirmed and little is known about him or of his fate after the confrontation that day.

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In 1989, Peter Ellingsen was The Age’s China correspondent and an eyewitness to the deadly events in Tiananmen Square, a terrible slaughter he believes we should never forget.

Remembering Tiananmen

….on the night of June 3, 1989, scores of Type 59 tanks rolled through the centre of Beijing crushing residents as they went. People standing on street corners were torn apart by tracer bullets, run over or clubbed to death. It was a slow, deadly procession that began about 10pm and finished at dawn. The bodies fell in laneways and houses, beside shops and offices, and finally, in a huge ceremonial space six times the size of the MCG. This was Tiananmen Square and it soaked up most of the blood.

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See Time magazine’s Photo Essay