Tiananmen 4

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Jiang Lin was there at Tiananmen Square in June of 1989: as a military insider, not a protester. She could have used her military ID to protect herself, but she went in civilian clothes to see what was happening. 

She hoped that soldiers would not turn guns on their own countrymen. As she put it, “The People’s Liberation Army is the people’s military and it should not enter the city or fire on civilians.” But the government ordered the clearing of the square--by any means.

"She dodged hails of gunfire, explosions, and heat from burning buses. She stayed close to the ground when she needed to. Armed police officers beat her with electric prods. Her head opened up, blood gushing onto the pavement."

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"Tiananmen was, by all accounts, the worst thing she’s experienced in her life — as a heartbreaking shift in her country, and an experience of shocking authoritarianism. “It felt like watching my own mother being raped,” she said. “It was unbearable.”