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China expert Patrick Chovanec live tweets Tiananmen Square massacre

TWITTER doesn’t exist in China but if it did 25 years ago this is how the Tiananmen Square massacre would have unfolded.

DEBRA KILLALEA
less than 2 min read
June 4, 2014 - 11:37AM

TWITTER doesn’t exist in China but if it did 25 years ago this is how the Tiananmen Square massacre may have been reported.

A leading China expert has created a captivating live Twitter feed which delivers an incredible insight into the 1989 massacre.

American Patrick Chovanec has dramatically captured the action and brutality after the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on thousands of protesters.

While it’s not known exactly how many people died, some experts say it runs into the thousands.

Demonstrators had been pushing for democratic reforms for weeks and the Chinese Communist Party, terrified of losing its grip on power, began firing and killing people in the streets on June 3 and 4.

The event is marked across the world in a series of commemorative ceremonies, but millions of Chinese people don’t even know about it or believe it never happened.

It’s not spoken about and Hong Kong and Macau are the only places in China where it is marked.

MORE: The photo China tried to hide

Mr Chovanec, the chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management, and an Adjunct Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, created the Twitter feed to reveal what went on during the bloody and brutal event.

China’s Global Times named him as one of the 10 foreigners who had the most influence on China in 2009, and one of just a thousand US citizens to have been permitted to visit North Korea.

The live tweets of the protests date back to May when demonstrators began staging hunger strikes, in a desperate bid to demand democracy.

A rickshaw driver peddles wounded people, with the help of bystanders, to a nearby hospital in Beijing after they were injured during clashes with Chinese soldiers in Tiananmen Square.
A rickshaw driver peddles wounded people, with the help of bystanders, to a nearby hospital in Beijing after they were injured during clashes with Chinese soldiers in Tiananmen Square.

The tweets show not only the brutality of the event but also the resilience and fear of everyday Chinese people in the face of a government which was determined not to lose its grip on power.

The feed gradually builds up to the People’s Liberation Army imposing martial law on May 20, just two weeks before the deadly massacre took place.

It then reveals the devastation left after the PLA stormed the city’s streets and the fear which hit China in the aftermath.

The tweets are long, exhaustive and certainly not for the faint-hearted with many bloody pictures of the shocking event.

But Mr Chovanec’s feed gives some insight to what really happened during those days in highly-secretive China.

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Original URL: https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/china-expert-patrick-chovanec-live-tweets-tiananmen-square-massacre/news-story/6fd8ab26873e2680052062887ba19d98