The Tank Man Research Essay

The obstructionist from Beijing who stood in the tank column in Tiananmen Square thirty years ago is known as “The Tank Man,” after the movie. The movie is made by Antony Thomas, and it is evident from the episode that even though the Tank Man wasn’t the cause of the government’s downfall after soldiers opened fire on peaceful protesters, it was an inspiration to activists and reformers around the world to fight against totalitarian oppressors.

Protests and Escalation

More than ten thousand civilians died as a result of the protests in the plaza. On June 1989, over 300,000 soldiers were sent to the Tiananmen Square, Beijing with orders to converge in the square and deal with unarmed citizens and students. The soldiers were armed with semi-automatic weapons, personal carriers, and tanks. There was a lot of confrontation between the soldiers and the civilians and the protests continued. The protests had begun with a mass student demonstration, and this soon turned to be a civilian protest. One in ten of the Beijing population joined the demonstration on a weekly basis. Doctors, nurses, army and navy men also joined the protest. The government, on its side, was paralyzed by infighting between those demanding crackdown and those advocating for peaceful negotiation (The Tank Man, 2006).

People were not cowed with the heavy troops in the streets as they continued flooding in the city. To block the advancement that was being made by the army, the citizens barricaded all the main road bridges and intersections with heavy equipment, buses, and Lorries. Armored personnel, however, rammed into the barricades and opened fire on the crowds. Troops fired in all directions, and this led to the loss of lives within the square. Those that were watching from their balconies also became victims of the gun fires from the army. Students ran in all directions and screams could be heard from the children and women. The long defiance by a ”tank man” marked the climax of the mass demonstration and was a demonstration of a fight for the rights of the vulnerable civilians.

Terrorism Related Content on the Video

The movie captures elements of terrorism and the negative effects that it has on society. Troops, in the film, are involved in terrorist activities, and this is attributed to the damage that it has on the innocent civilians. During the protests, the army fires in different directions, and this leads to the loss of innocent lives that were even not a part of the protesters. The number of casualties as a result of the force that was used by the troops also increased across the weeks.

Another act of terrorism that is evident in the film is the massive destruction of property by the Chinese army. The destruction of the building was aimed at pushing away the civilians that were pushing on with their demonstrations. Some of the factors that may have contributed to the terror-like activities by the troops included the failure by them to negotiate with the civilians and lack of intelligent information on the planning of mass demonstrations by the students. Intelligence information can be instrumental in the strategic mapping of those targeted areas that are inhabited by the terrorists, and this is a strategy that would have been embraced by the government to help in preventing the eruption of mass demonstrations.

References

The Tank Man. (2006). Retrieved August 08, 2017, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/tankman/