Tiananmen Square Document 14: Cable, SITREP No. 32: The Morning of June 4, 1989

The crackdown continued through the night, and by early morning June 4, as this cable reports, the PLA was in control Tiananmen Square. Based on eyewitness accounts of the violence, this SITREP is the Embassy's initial effort to provide some detail on the final PLA assault on the approximately 3,000 demonstrators who had not yet left the square. "Some 10,000 troops," the document says, formed a ring around the square, and "a column of about 50 APC, tanks, and trucks entered Tiananmen from the east." Demonstrators shouted angrily, the cable states, and "PLA troops in Tiananmen opened a barrage of rifle and machine gun fire." Another column of military vehicles entered soon thereafter, and more gunfire ensued, "causing a large number of casualties." The document also describes violent PLA clashes with demonstrators on Changan Boulevard, the main thoroughfare in the Tiananmen area, and in other parts of Beijing. Embassy officials also report conversations with angry citizens, some "claiming that more than 10,000 people had been killed at Tiananmen." One woman claimed to have witnessed a tank running over 11 people. She also told Embassy officers that she had seen PLA troops "breaking the windows of shops, banks, and other buildings."

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Original source: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/documents/index.html#d14