People’s Republic of Amnesia

The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited by Louisa Lim, Oxford University Press, 2014. 

Summary

This is a book about the massacre of several hundred students by the Peoples Liberation Army at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4, 1989. The book also talks about similar protests that occurred on the same day in Chengdu. 

Timeline

• April 15, 1989: Death of General Secretary Hu Yaobang

• April 17, 1989: Beijing Students Autonomous Federation gather at Beijing Normal University to mourn reformer Hu Yaobang

• April 22, 1989: Great Hall of the People funeral for Hu Yaobang

• June 4, 1989: Attack on students gathered in Tiananmen Square

Villains 

• Premier Li Peng was called “The Butcher of Beijing”

• Deng Xiao Ping was ultimately responsible for the student massacre

Heroes

• Hu Yaobang, Communist Party General Secretary

• Zhao Ziyang, Communist Party General Secretary, who was under house arrest for 15 years, until his death in 2005

• Bao Tong, director of the Office of Political Reform, released in 1994 after seven years in Qincheng Prison

• Xu Qinxian, Major General, commander of  the 38^th Group Army of the PLA, who refused to deploy his troops against the student protestors, who was arrested, and who spent four years in Qincheng Prison

• Tiananmen Mothers, relatives of people killed on June 4, 1989

• Tan Zuoren, sentenced to five years in prison for commemorating the rebellion of June 4, 1989