Thursday, June 4, 2009

Tiananmen Square Massacre Map

"Behold the age of murderers" wrote Rimbaud. Yet even his imagination would have been insufficient to keep up with what we know in living memory.

MC itself can barely keep up: so many slaughtered, so little time for remembrance and mourning. History makes us question our daily lives daily.

June 4th is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. MC has yet to find reliable estimates of the number killed.

Click on the title of this post to go the the FP article from which this map is taken; know that MC finds it hard to believe only 176 people were killed but FP is nothing if not politically correct. The note at the end of the dead shows the weasel words: (Note: A victim is listed as unknown if his or her family wishes not to publicize the victim’s name or if family has not been found. In the latter case, a victim is added to the list only if there are two or more eyewitnesses to his or her death.)

Click on the map above in order to enlarge it.

Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal Of Premier Zhao Ziyang has recently been published. In this posthumous book, Ziyang tells all about how he tried to avert the killing. Click here to order it. If you're reading this post, you ought to order it.

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