Regarding tone, it may just be because it’s very difficult to convey over text (and I am just misinterpreting), but also that my short stint here has led me to believe that while I in theory share political views with socialists here, these so called “tankies” are also very confrontational and polemic for no apparent reason (apparent to me at least). Said differences interest me though, so I am trying to grasp just what it all boils down to and what if anything I can learn from it.

Here's a place where perhaps I can be helpful, since I feel like I won't be much use elsewhere. Pay close attention to the way that the anticommunists here talk about their opposition and imagine being the subject of that talk by a substantial portion of this userbase and basically the entire mainstream of other websites like Reddit (of which it borders on being a carbon copy). It's easy to see Marxists referred to as "red fascists," "genocide deniers," sometimes flat-out "Nazis," along with being accused of being a "shill," a "bot," a "troll," a foreign agent (you can see people complaining about "how many Russians" are on this site, but they don't actually have reason to believe many Russians are here). All of that sits behind the sneering accusation of "tankie."

Now, it's kind of whatever to me when it's online -- and this sort of "anti-tankie" framework almost always is -- but some people take that sort of thing as a serious insult because equating someone to Nazis is a pretty serious insult. All this while the people making the accusation bandy about things like the 10k figure we discussed, which is just ridiculous but you are treated as a holocaust denier for trying to interrogate its dogma. Even you, when trying to be amicable with me, still use terms like "regime," which essentially means "government I don't like" with the way it gets used.

So, I don't encourage people to get needlessly combative, but I can slip into it myself and I struggle to fault others who do so as well (though I encourage them to take things dispassionately!). I hope that that explains a little bit of it, because personal insult just saturates the environment in some places.

Regarding the rest of this, let me know if the organization of information is too hectic and I'll rewrite it.

It’s quite possible that one person saw something another did not, or that they were not there at the same time. Just based on my experience in crowded places like concerts, having complete situational awareness is impossible, and I am sure that with just 5 deaths in a huge square filled with thousands of people at night time you would have a substantial number that did not see anything. Their deaths are still quite likely though, as there are multiple sources that back this up - see the ones I have referenced above if you have any doubt.

I do not doubt that these are real people who are dead, let me repeat that again. That said, these 5 are singled out because they supposedly died in the square.

I've presented you with witness testimony from multiple sources saying that people were not, in fact, killed in the square and the crowd was dispersed pretty uneventfully (though I think to actually reach the square in the first place people were beat back with batons to make way). Most of the people were already gone before the dispersal because most of the protestors listened to the warnings and the deadline.

Quoting the photo article:

“Once agreement was reached for the students to withdraw,” said Lilley in his cable, “the students left the square through the southeast corner. Essentially everyone, including Gallo, left. The few that attempted to remain behind were beaten and driven to join the end of the departing procession.”

The square was mostly cleared peacefully and those who refused were beaten with batons to drive them out. They weren't just wantonly shot.

There's no reason that the student leader who said he stayed until 6:30 AM wouldn't have seen this victim, since the victim was shot "early in the morning on June 4th" and the leader witnessed the square being cleared, just as many others did. Perhaps if you have other information that complicates the case, that will be worth considering, but it seems like the simplest answer is that he was somewhere else at the time he was shot. Perhaps he was at the flag, then cleared the square, got caught up in the ensuing fighting elsewhere, and was shot then, with his body only properly discovered and identified by people who knew him after the shooting occurred. The story you linked to doesn't give any indication that he was, for example, with friends who saw him get killed.

Perhaps his friends were with him, but then it raises the question of why they were not also shot and how they were able to arrange transportation to get him to the hospital where he succumbed, which the article might prefer to gloss over.

Which reminds me:

Not familiar with HRIC, it was just the search results that came up and they seem to be based on the information provided by the first hand witnesses I mentioned.

This is exactly what I mean about how you don't need to censor a story, just make your version much more accessible, because we keep getting these reactions along the lines of "well, I don't endorse the source here, it's just the first one I saw". Just something to think about.

If those books provide any more details that could be pertinent to the evaluation of this guy's case, I invite you to share them with me, but I hope you can understand that I'm not going to go and buy a book so I can evaluate you claims unless there's some extraordinary circumstance involved.

You can take more time to look over the information I gave you, since there were a few things made clear that I think you missed. Chief among them is that this isn't a Boston Massacre situation, despite the obvious parallels. Unlike the redcoats, the PLA who were outside of vehicles and present and supervising the protest were unarmed. I never even insinuated that the protestors threw an incendiary at a soldier and then the others started blasting -- they couldn't even if they wanted to! That segment had no guns! Though it seems that the soldiers who were in military vehicles were armed, and the victims were inside military vehicles.

What I am saying is that the severity of the crackdown and the ensuing violence were in part brought on by the harsh escalation of these militants hiding among the more mundane protestors committing murder against an unarmed soldier and then hanging up his corpse like a declaration of war! Well, they killed a couple, but one or two were just hung against a wreck while another was actually suspended in the air (I believe under a bridge). This was all well before the night of the crackdown, though I don't know exactly when.

I've been using a framework loosely based on how crimes are sometimes argued, by establishing witnesses and timelines and looking for inconsistencies or other possible explanations. What could possibly have happened to produce this situation otherwise, with a soldier's corpse strung up in broad daylight with people able to just stand around and gawk at it? It only makes sense as being before the crackdown, when civilians could just stand around and gawk in broad daylight (rather than, at the gentlest, be pushed away by troops securing the area, possibly shot if they resisted) and the body is still strung up rather than taken down (as it would be after the crackdown ended and people could return to the area). There's no way that these pictures were taken during the fighting, no one is behaving like there is gunfire going off nearby.

Drawing again from the article with the photo, since we actually don't need to speculate just with the photo:

The Chinese government also asserted that unarmed soldiers who had entered Tienanmen Square in the two days prior to June 4 were set on fire and lynched with their corpses hung from buses. Other soldiers were incinerated when army vehicles were torched with soldiers unable to evacuate and many others were badly beaten by violent mob attacks.

Unless the soldiers were sleeping on-site or taking 70-hour shifts, that means the murders probably took place the night of June 2 - 3 or thereabout, since they surely would have had another chance to report back otherwise. The article likewise says that the corpses were seemingly from vehicles getting petrol bombed, extracted from the vehicle, and strung up on the night of the 2nd to 3rd.

It's worth noting that there's a huge difference in how you approach a situation between "There's an unruly group of protestors we need to remove" vs "There's a pretty amicable group of protestors that also has militant splinters that have killed other soldiers via incendiaries -- possibly provided by the US -- and strung the corpse up. Oh, and they stole some guns too". Suddenly, people carrying such weapons -- which you are now looking for among every bag and bottle -- are established to not only be quite capable of killing you but seemingly out for blood, considering the display they made of the corpse.

The article with the photos is worth reading.