The PLA General who said 'No' to suppressing the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989
By an odd historical coincidence, just as potential war crimes are finally being directed against the US military officers (and their civilian overseers in the Defense Department) involved with the now 3-month long terror campaign against small boats off the Venezuelan coast, the full video transcripts of the secret trial of PLA Major General Xu Qinxian in 1990 were just leaked this week — apparently by a highly placed source within the PLA itself as part of the ongoing power struggle surrounding Xi Jinping.
This was first reported in the Chinese dissident publication People News, but has now been picked up by major mainstream media sources, including the London Times:
In a rare leak, a video showing the court martial of the Chinese general who refused an order to send his troops into Tiananmen Square to put down the 1989 student protests has been posted online in full.
The six-hour video shows Major General Xu Qinxian sitting in the dock the following year as he is accused of failing to obey martial law orders after the Communist Party leadership decided to end the protests by force.
“I said I had a different opinion,” he says in a quiet voice, using a series of polite circumlocutions to describe his refusal. He recounts his conversations with the political commissar of the Beijing military region and other officers who were trying to persuade him to send in the elite 38th Group Army, which he commanded and was situated just south of the capital.
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When it became clear that his superiors were determined to act, he asked them to find someone else. He is thought to have been the only general to refuse orders during the crackdown.
A longstanding story says that as he bowed before his fate, knowing he would be punished for his refusal, the general commented that he would “rather be beheaded than judged a criminal by history”.
He ended up serving 5 years in prison before being confined to house arrest in his hometown of Shijiazhuang for the rest of his life, finally dying at the age of 85 in 2021. Wikipedia also has a good writeup about his role during the Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent court martial:
In March 1989, Xu was wounded in a grenade training accident and sent to the Beijing Military Region (BMR) Hospital in the capital.[4] According to Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng, Xu was actually hospitalized with kidney stones.[3] While hospitalized, Xu watched the student movement unfold and was moved to tears by media coverage of the student protestors' hunger strike in Tiananmen Square.[4]
According to Yang, Xu was recovering from an operation to remove kidney stones when he was visited on 17 May by Li Laizhu, the deputy military commander of the BMR. Xu was informed of an impending mobilization and declaration of martial law on 19 May, and was asked to express his support as an army commander. Xu said he could not comply with a verbal order to mobilize and demanded to see a written order. When told by Li that it "was wartime" and an order in writing would be provided later, Xu responded that there was no war, and reiterated his refusal to carry out a verbal order.
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According to The Tiananmen Papers, Yang sent Zhou Yibing, the commander of the BMR, to Baoding to persuade Xu. Xu asked Zhou whether the three principals of the Central Military Commission had approved the martial law order. Zhou replied that while Deng Xiaoping, the chairman, and Yang Shangkun, the vice-chairman, had approved, Zhao Ziyang, the first vice-chairman, had not. Without Zhao's approval, Xu refused to act on the order and asked for sick leave. His request was not granted but he still refused to report to duty.[8]
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Xu's defiance fanned fears in the Communist Party of a rebellion among the military and heightened the belief that the student protesters were a serious threat that had to be eliminated.[6] The 38th Group Army under new leadership proceeded to play a major role in suppressing the demonstrators. Many of Xu Qinxian's former colleagues were promoted for their roles.[3]
If only more members of our own military had Xu’s moral courage and refused to participate in the clearly illegal orders they’ve been handed by the renegade regime currently exercising power in DC.
