Tiananmen square

[Ace_777]

O.k I know this is kinda political. But I saw images of a really brave guy standing infront of a tank. It was the first time I saw these pics on the news (its a memorial day today I think). So what was this guy doing and whats he doing today ?. That image just sticks in my mind. Hes really brave for doing that.

edit : sorry for writing this in such a rush. my sis needs comp

[Saitek]

The history forum...

Your story is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/date ... 496277.stm

[ozzy72]

If he isn't dead he is probably still in prison... nice people those CCP types

[C]

If he isn't dead he...

...probably wishes he was.

[Ben_M_K]

This is a pretty interesting subject for me, just 1 year and a few days ago I was standing in Tiananmen Square. Very interesting place with a lot of history.

Ben

[Flt.Lt.Andrew]

The guy is dead.
The Communists found him, shot him and decapitated him. Nasty business.

A.

[Woodlouse2002]

I last heard he was still in prison. The images of him stopping that tank column made him far too famous to just kill off like Andrew has suggested happened.

[Hagar]

According to several reports I've read he was never identified. If the Sunday Express named him correctly & he suffered for it, surely the editor is just as responsible for it as the Chinese authorities. http://www.answers.com/topic/tank-man

Almost nothing is known of the man's identity. Shortly after the incident, British tabloid the Sunday Express named him as Wang Weilin, a 19-year-old student; however, the veracity of this claim is dubious. What has happened to Wang following the demonstration is equally obscure. In a speech to the President's Club in 1999, Bruce Herschensohn - former deputy special assistant to President of the United States Richard Nixon and a member of the President Ronald Reagan transition team - reported that he was executed 14 days later; other sources say he was killed by firing squad a few months after the Tiananmen Square protests. In Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now, Jan Wong writes that the man is still in hiding in mainland China.

As one of the Chinese pro-democracy movement's leaders remarked, there is more than one hero in the Tank Man picture. Besides the person who risked his life stepping in front of the war machine, there is the tank driver who disobeyed his orders and refused to overrun his compatriot.

As with most matters related to the Tiananmen Square protests, the Tank Man topic is still a political taboo in mainland China, where any discussion of it is regarded as inappropriate or risky.

This reminds me of several similar incidents during the Hungarian uprising in 1956. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Hungarian_Revolution

[Craig.]

if the paper did end up getting someone killed over this it would proove without any doubt just how big a pile of crap these editors truely are. And even worse they do it with a clear conscience.

[Ex-RoNiN]

From what I have heard happened, a crewmember got out of the first tank shortly after the pic was taken and gunned him down.