Tank Man

Tank Man (also known as the Unknown Protester or the Unknown Rebel) is an unidentified individual, presumed to be a Chinese man, who stood in front of a column of Type 59 tanks on Chang'an Avenue near Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 5, 1989. The confrontation occurred one day after the government of China forcibly cleared the square following six weeks of pro-democracy demonstrations, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people, primarily in areas surrounding the square.

On the morning of June 5th, a long column of tanks proceeded east along Chang'an Avenue after the military's clearing operations. A lone man carrying shopping bags stepped into the path of the lead tank and refused to move. When the tank attempted to steer around him, he repeatedly shifted positions to block its movement. The tanks came to a complete stop rather than run him over. The man then climbed onto the lead tank, where he appeared to speak with members of the PLA inside before returning to the road.

The moment was captured by international photographers and television crews watching from balconies and hotel rooms overlooking the avenue. Broadcast around the world, the scene quickly became one of the most iconic and widely recognized images of all time. Inside China, the image and the accompanying events are subject to censorship.

Multiple documentaries and exhibitions related to the Tiananmen protests highlight the tank confrontation, and the figure of "Tank Man" has become an enduring symbol of nonviolent resistance. The Sunday Express was the first to circulate the name "Wang Weilin" for the protester, though this identification has never been confirmed. His true identity and fate remain unknown, and various news organizations have reported different speculative names. In 2006, Frontline produced a detailed documentary focusing on the events surrounding the incident.

In April 1998, Time magazine included "The Unknown Rebel" in its list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Life magazine's 2003 book 100 Photos That Changed the World also featured the photographs of the tank confrontation. Despite the image's global status as a symbol of individual courage, the Chinese government continues to restrict the distribution and discussion of the photographs and the broader protests on the Internet.

Little reliable information exists regarding the identity or fate of either the protester or the crew of the lead tank. Timothy Brook writes that the man was charged with a ten year prison sentence. Witnesses have reported that other individuals also attempted to block the tank column at different points during the demonstrations.

Obstruction

At the northeast edge of Tiananmen Square, along Chang'an Avenue, shortly after noon on June 5, 1989, the day after the Chinese government's violent suppression of the Tiananmen protests, "Tank Man" stood in the middle of the wide avenue, directly in the path of a column of approaching Type 59 tanks. Stuart Franklin, who was on assignment for Time magazine, told The New York Times: "At some point, shots were fired and the tanks carried on down the road toward us, leaving Tiananmen Square behind, until blocked by a lone protester." As the tanks came to a stop, the man gestured at them with one of the bags. In response, the lead tank attempted to drive around the man, but the man repeatedly stepped into the path of the tank in a show of nonviolent action. while Jan Wong, who was there for The Globe and Mail, thought that the men who pulled him away were concerned bystanders.

Identity and whereabouts

Little is publicly known of the man's identity or that of the commander of the lead tank. Shortly after the incident, the London newspaper Sunday Express named him as Wang Weilin, a 19-year-old student who was later charged with "political hooliganism" and "attempting to subvert members of the People's Liberation Army." Several other sources and Timothy Brook's analysis also identify Tank Man as Wang Weilin, son of a factory worker. One party member was quoted as saying: "We can't find him. We got his name from journalists. We have checked through computers but can't find him among the dead or among those in prison."

Conflicting stories tell what happened to him after the demonstration. In a speech to the President's Club in 1999, Bruce Herschensohn, former deputy special assistant to US President Richard Nixon, said he was executed 14 days later; other sources say he was executed by firing squad a few months after the Tiananmen Square protests.

The Chinese government has made few statements about the incident or the people involved. The government denounced him as a "scoundrel" once on state television, but the segment was never shown publicly again. In a 1990 interview with Barbara Walters, Jiang Zemin, then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, was asked what became of the man. Jiang first said (through an interpreter), "I can't confirm whether this young man you mentioned was arrested or not", and then replied in English, "I think [that he was] never killed." The government also argued that the incident evidenced the "humanity" of the country's military.

In a 2000 interview with Mike Wallace, Jiang said, "He was never arrested." He then stated, "I don't know where he is now." He also emphasized that the tank stopped and did not run the young man over.

right|thumb|The intersection in 2014, viewed from a different angle|alt=A wide street blocked off by white guardrails with a large tree at the left in front of it and part of a brick building on the right in the rear. At the far left is an intersection with traffic lights.

In July 2017, it was reported by Apple Daily that the Tank Man's real name may be Zhang Weimin, a native of Shijingshan, Beijing, who was 24 years old in 1989. The man who gave the story claimed that he was in the same cell with Zhang in Beijing Yanqing Prison. The verdict stated that he struck a tank with a brick and was initially sentenced to life imprisonment, which was later reduced to 20 years. After winning an award at Yanqing Prison, he was released on parole in 2007. After his release, however, he had no relatives or housing and developed a gambling habit. A few years later, he was imprisoned at Kenhua Prison (located in Tianjin and managed by Beijing), and his sentence was increased by two years. According to the article, Zhang was still being held in the 11th division of Kenhua Prison, and at the time of the article's publication he was expected to be released shortly.

Censorship

In 2006, a PBS interview of six experts observed that the memory of the Tiananmen Square protests appears to have faded in China, especially among younger Chinese people, due to government censorship. Images of the protest on the Internet have been censored in China. One of the students said that the image was "artwork".

It has been suggested that the "Unknown Rebel", if still alive, may be unaware of his international recognition.

On June 4, 2021, the 32nd anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, searches for the Tank Man image and videos were censored by Microsoft's Bing search engine worldwide. Hours after Microsoft acknowledged the issue, the search returned only pictures of tanks elsewhere in the world. Search engines that license results from Microsoft such as DuckDuckGo and Yahoo faced similar issues. Microsoft said the issue was "due to an accidental human error." The director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, said the idea that it was an inadvertent error is "hard to believe". David Greene, Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that content moderation was impossible to do perfectly and "egregious mistakes are made all the time", but, he further elaborated, "At worst, this was purposeful suppression at the request of a powerful state."

Photographic versions

Five photographers managed to capture the event on film. On June 4, 2009, the fifth photographer released an image of the scene taken from ground level.

The widest coverage of the event and one of the best-known photographs of the event, appearing in both of the magazines Time and Life, was documented by Stuart Franklin. He was on the same balcony as Charlie Cole, and his film was smuggled out of the country by a French student, concealed in a box of tea. The American exchange student Kirk Martsen unexpectedly met Widener in the hotel lobby, and upon request he allowed Widener to take photos from his hotel room. Circumstances were against the photographer, who recalled that the picture was almost not taken. Widener was injured, suffering from the flu and running out of film. Martsen, the college student, hastily obtained a roll of Fuji 100 ASA color negative film, allowing Widener to make the shot. Martsen then smuggled the film out of the hotel, and delivered it to the Beijing Associated Press office. and the picture was featured in Life "100 Photographs That Changed the World" in 2003.

On June 4, 2009, in connection with the 20th anniversary of the protests, the Associated Press reporter Terril Jones revealed a photo he had taken showing Tank Man from ground level, a different angle from all of the other known photos of Tank Man. Jones wrote that he was not aware of what he had captured until a month later when printing his photos.

Arthur Tsang Hin Wah of Reuters took several shots from room 1111 of the Beijing Hotel, but only the shot of Tank Man climbing the tank was chosen. The ABC correspondents Max Uechtritz and Peter Cave were the journalists reporting from the balcony.

Staged event theory

Harunobu Kato, a Japanese NHK journalist who covered the Tiananmen Square protests on-site, argues that the incident involving the Tank Man was staged by the Chinese Communist Party.

According to Kato, the Tank Man wore a conspicuously bright white shirt, unusual for a student protester who had supposedly been sleeping in the square for days, and nearby military personnel were also seen wearing white shirts. Despite the square allegedly being fully secured by the military a day earlier, the man walked onto the avenue and blocked a column of tanks for more than three minutes. Nearly twenty tanks lined up behind the lead tank did not attempt to bypass him, and the soldiers made no effort to remove or restrain him, instead allowing him to stand there unimpeded.

In addition, despite the heavy security surrounding the square, the Chinese Communist Party later announced that the Tank Man had "escaped," an explanation Kato describes as suspicious.

Kato also notes that many foreign journalists, including himself, were staying at the Beijing Hotel, whose windows provided a perfect vantage point from which the famous scene could be recorded. Furthermore, when General Secretary Jiang Zemin was interviewed by CNN in 2000, he stated that the tanks were "humane because they did not kill the young man and stopped."

At the time, Western media had reported that tanks had run over and killed many students at Tiananmen Square, thus creating a need for the Chinese authorities to counter this perception.

Legacy

In April 1998, Time included the "Unknown Rebel" in a feature titled "Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century". Although the images of Tank Man are regarded as iconic symbols of the 20th century, most young people in China do not recognize the photograph because the Chinese government prohibits the circulation of related images on the Internet.

In media

In the 1999 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song "Stand and Be Counted", from the album Looking Forward, David Crosby sings of his gratitude to Tank Man, whose photograph he had framed and mounted.

A similar scene is depicted in the music video for "Only One" (2003) by the American rock band Yellowcard as well as "Club Foot" (2004) by the English rock band Kasabian.

A fictionalized story of Tank Man and a soldier in the tank is told in Lucy Kirkwood's 2013 play Chimerica, which premiered at the Almeida Theatre from May 20, 2013, to July 6, 2013. The final scene of Lauren Yee's 2018 play, The Great Leap, includes another fictionalized story of Tank Man as the protagonist Wen Chang describes himself as the Tank Man while stepping into an enlarged projection of the iconic photograph.

On June 4, 2013, Sina Weibo, China's most popular microblog, blocked terms whose English translations are "today", "tonight", "June 4", and "big yellow duck". If these were searched for, a message appeared stating that the search results could not be shown in accordance with relevant laws, statutes, and policies. The censorship occurred because a photoshopped version of Tank Man, in which rubber ducks replaced the tanks, had been circulating on Twitter—a reference to Florentijn Hofman's Rubber Duck sculpture, which at that time was floating in Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour.

In April 2019, Leica Camera released an advertisement depicting photographers in intense political climates, including 1989 China. The five-minute short ends with a photographer shooting from a hotel window with the Tank Man image reflected in his lens, despite the fact that the original photograph was taken with a Nikon camera. After the Leica brand was censored on Sina Weibo, Leica revoked the advertisement and sought to distance themselves from it.

References

Notes

External links

The Stuart Franklin photo at Life magazine 100 photos that changed the world.
Professor disclosed heroic Wang Weilin still in world, dajiyuan.com. Retrieved June 1, 2006.
PBS Frontline documentary "The Tank Man", 2006, Program viewable online. Last Retrieved July 29, 2008.
The photos that defined a massacre, BBC
John McBeth (13 Sep, 2019) "Tank man photographer Charlie Cole died in Bali" aged 64