Hundreds of pages of secret documents leaked to the ABC provide a rare glimpse into how human censors and AI erase references to Beijing's violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 1989.

It has grown faster, smarter and increasingly invisible, quietly erasing the memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre from public view.

Thirty-six years on, Beijing still has not disclosed the official death toll of the bloody crackdown on a pro-democracy gathering on June 4, when more than 1 million protesters were in the square.

Historians estimate that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) killed anywhere from 200 to several thousand people that day.

  • IttihadChe@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    Those darn time travelling Chinese went back in time or something!

    The Chinese government has said the death toll was about 200

    From their June, 3, 2009 piece.

    https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=7744479&page=1

    Which happens to line up with the lower “historian estimates” they provide in this article…

    Historians estimate that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) killed anywhere from 200 to several thousand people that day.

    Unironically they probably intentionally changed their story on PLA claims because if the PLA claims around 200 and many historians claim around 200, then the higher estimates are less likely to be blindly trusted.