Tiananmen Square Massacre，Peking, 1989

They are in their early 20s, some still teenagers. Their friend is dying, but not on a battlefield. This is their capital city, Beijing, China. For weeks, the students rallied peacefully for freedom, for democracy. This is their government's answer. This is the People's Liberation Army, advancing down a street called Chang'an, pushing towards Tiananmen Square. No one doubted what the army could do if the Communist Party leadership brought the hammer down. First, flashbacks. Then, live rounds, fired into the crowd. It took a while for it to sink in. The People's Army was shooting the people. The crowd's response was electrifying. They were defiant, outraged. They threw up obstacles to stop the army's advance, led by students, by their teachers. You could sense this instinct among them all, an instinct to resist. The barricades slowed the troops' advance along Chang'an, but not for long. An army personnel carrier appeared from a side street. The crowd jammed steel fences into its tracks, set fires to smoke the crew out. At least one soldier tried to surrender. The protesters swarmed him. The crowd was persuaded to spare the soldier before it was too late. At one point, I said to a student, the street, Chang'an, what does Chang'an mean? Eternal peace. The army's megaphones, the loud hailers. You didn't need to understand the language to get the message. So I kept rolling to get the sound on tape, even if I didn't have a shot. It wasn't about us, the foreigners, witnessing this. It was about the protesters. Those kids were staring down the guns of the world's largest standing army. The trail of bodies leads into Tiananmen Square. Some of the protesters are medical students. Others, doctors from Beijing hospitals. You don't think that person is dying. You think these people are trying to save lives. That's the focus that keeps you recording. Gunfire is creeping closer. Still, they tend to the wounded. I remember thinking, get more light into the lens. Focus. Keep the camera rolling. Don't screw up. This isn't just another news story. Don't drink. Don't drink. Don't drink. Don't. Don't get up here. Don't get up here. Don't get up here. Don't get up here. It's all blood. Are they all carrying golden ducklings? Come on. What do I tell to my country? We should talk to them. Yes, we should talk to them. Don't fight with them. If you fight with them, our students will suffer. We are wearing a national flag. Are you a student? No, I'm not. If you want to die, you have to die here. Thank you, sir. Mao Zedong wrote, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Thirteen years after his death, his successors unleash Mao's maxim on their own people. In Tiananmen Square, heavenly peace square. A government TV crew records the operation from within the army's ranks. The videotapes are just part of the evidence amassed by the party leadership. Evidence China's government has never made public. A final act of defiance. The protesters commandeer a bus. They're quickly surrounded. All the people on the bus must leave Tiananmen Square Many students refuse to leave Tiananmen Square. They gather in the center on a monument to the people's heroes. Old Jiang has come out. It's not just blood. I wiped out Old Jiang. The driver. He was right there. Right at the entrance. I hit him with a stick. I didn't care about anything else. I just hit Old Jiang. The soldiers immediately put down their sticks and bottles in front of all the armed forces. We urgently call to put down all the sticks and bottles and gather around the monument. Sit down. We have always advocated peace. I'll never forget that young couple. When the shot moved in, the way she looked at me. Who are you? Are you shooting this for the government? I kept rolling, but I lifted my face away from the viewfinder to show them I was a foreign journalist. It wasn't a good feeling. How could I just leave those kids there? But if I stayed, the army gets the tapes, the footage, the evidence. I had to go. We still don't know for sure what happened to all those young people who stayed on the Heroes' Monument. But they're not voiceless, even 30 years later, even with the Chinese government refusing to release evidence of that massacre. Who speaks for them? The Tiananmen mothers, whose children died seeking freedom.