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73 year old Hu Yaobang passed away from a heart attack on April 15th.
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Mourners begin to gather in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to express their condolences for the death of their former leader. Along with this, many gathered to start demonstrations to quicken the pace of reforment in China.
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Universities and cities all around the nation started taking part in demonstrations. They fought for greater freedom, democracy, a stop to inflation, higher salaries, better housing and a end to dictatorship.
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A newspaper in China produces an editorial with the title “The Necessity for a Clear Stand Aganist Turmoil”. The peice angered the protesters as it suggested that protestors were rejecting the Communist Party.
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Numbers of protesters dramatically increased. There were now more then 10,000 Chinese students taking part in the largest demonstrations of the past 40 years.
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Students went to Tiananmen Square to take part in a hunger strike. The reason for the students extreme action was they felt agrovated by the governments failure to answer to protesters dialogue requests.
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Troops begin to move into the city center, but civilians blocked their pathes, setting up barricades. These soldiers did not fire at civilians as ordered.
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Over the last weeks demonstrations continued with an optimistic atmosphere. However during those weeks the government was planning new ways to end the chaos of the demonstrations. On June 2 the decision to attempt to stop the riot by force was approved by Communist Party elders.
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Armed soldiers made their way up to Tiananmen Square, many people filling the streets in attempt to block the soldiers. This did not go over well, as the soliders open fired loaded guns into the crowds. Many were killed and injured, as well as fires started all over the city. People attempted to bring any injured to nearby hospitals, carrying them on bikes, lying them down on benches, and more in efforts to try and save lives. Many were surprised to see their own army harming them.
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Residents nearby Tiananmen Square walked up to see what was going on. The soliders once again open fired into the crowd of people and local residents. Spontaneous open firings happened throughout the rest day. Government was satisfied with the outcome of the events on June 3, authorities announcing that no one in the square itself was shot dead. To this day no one knows the exact amount killed in this protest.
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An unarmed man stands in front of a parade of tanks in assumed defiance of the actions the Chinese military took re-controlling Beijing. What happened to him is unknown.
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The new Chinese leader appears for the first time since the protest crisis, and congratulates the military for handling the situation as best as they could against a violent anti-communist group.
