Tiananmen Square Massacre Denial Furore
On 15 May 2007, during an informal meeting Ma had with journalists to discuss political reform, Ma was asked on his views on the "Tiananmen massacre". Ma caused huge furore which hit radio broadcasts, the front pages and editorials of several of the local newspapers, which cited him denying that clampdown of the protesters was a "massacre".
He said of 4000 students at the scene, not everyone got killed; certain student leaders, namely Chai Ling, Wuerkaixi, Feng Chungde, and Hou Dejian, were able to leave the protest site without incident, therefore it is not a massacre. Comments which appeared to cause the most offense related to the alleged army tanks' rolling over protesters, and the PLA's cremation of victim's bodies on-site:
| “ | How could people say bodies were minced under the tanks? Has anybody tried mincing meat under tanks? Try doing this with pigs and we will know! ....It takes 1000 °C to cremate bodies. If could burn bodies this way, there would be no backlogs at the cremation chambers, would there? | ” |
Ma questioned whether "Gweilos" (a racial epithet for Caucasians) should be the ones to interpret the truth about Tiananmen, and asserted that Hong Kong was "not mature enough", for believing a massacre took place. Hong Kong lacked patriotism and national identity, and would thus not be ready for universal suffrage until 2022.
Ma also asked the Education Department to define massacre as events where over 4,000 were dead, which would make Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 not a massacre under the new definition. He later withdrew the redefinition request.
Read more about this topic: Ma Lik
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