xecutioners stepped behind the prisoners and fired a single pistol bullet into the base of their skulls. Six days earlier, three men were convicted of torching a train that had plowed into pro-democracy demonstrators on June 6, killing six people; the court took only a few days to reject their appeals. The procedure was similar to the Shandong province capital of Jinan, where 17 people were put to death for ‘seriously endangering public order.’ Seven more people were executed in Beijing, convicted of attacking People’s Liberation Army troops that participating in the Tiananmen Square clearing operation, which took the lives of many hundreds.
The moment the demonstrations were quashed by government force, the Supreme People’s Protectorate deployed emergency notices to the public security agencies throughout China. These notices warned the agencies that they should not allow details to interfere with the prosecution of those involved in counter-revolutionary crimes. While many of those who participated in the demonstration in the name of democracy were workers and unemployed citizens, a great many of them were also students. Premier Li Peng admitted after the demonstration was brought under control that there were still a good many people to be apprehended and that in no way could the country leave them unpunished. The rest of the world is not so certain about the punishment of those calling for democracy, a movement that only mirrors the demonstrations responsible for dismantling the Berli
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